


Belief is a Wise Wager

by refuse_to_sink



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive!Laura, Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Dirty Talk, Frottage, M/M, Masturbation, Mentions of Bottom Derek, Mentions of Voyeurism, Off-screen Character Death, Office Sex, Phone Sex, Rimming, Vibrator, Werewolves are still a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:40:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 66,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/refuse_to_sink/pseuds/refuse_to_sink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles accepts a new job (thanks to Mayor Laura Hale), in a new town and inadvertently starts a war, but it’s not his fault. Honestly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I swore up, down and whatever other direction that I wouldn’t post another WIP, yet here it is! I just feel like I’m more motivated to work harder once I’ve posted. 
> 
> Read the notes at the bottom if you're concerned about the character death.

Even a man who is pure in heart and

Says his prayers by night,

Could become a wolf when the Wolfbane blooms,

And may become a werewolf,

When the autumn moon is bright.

 

“Just think about the money, the money Stiles. Think about it,” Stiles chants to himself, he squints his eyes trying to navigate his poor jeep through the billowing snow under the cover of darkness. It’s the beginning of November and the moon is high in the sky, stars actually visible the farther away he drives from the city. 

He’s left behind the comfort of Beacon Hills, a place he’s known all his life because if he’s being honest with himself there’s nothing left for him there. His father passed away almost six months ago and Stiles has spent that time trying not to go crazy and sorting out his family house. He always assumed (not that he thought about his father dying often) that his dad would die either on the job or from a bad heart (the amount of unhealthy high cholesterol food he ate) but instead he died in a car accident on the high way. 

There was a truck with steel piping attached to the flatbed – it wasn’t secured properly. The steel piping somehow got dislodged from where it was secured and fell onto the roads, cars tried to swerve but there wasn’t enough time and it led to a massive car pile-up. Not everyone died, some lived, some injured, some not. Stiles dad, not one of the fortunate ones. It wasn’t even like Stiles could get some satisfaction through the driver of the truck getting into trouble; no it was deemed an “accident.”

Regardless Stiles’ dad received the nicest funeral, put together by his dads’ co-workers on the police force. They spared no expenses and it was also a massive relief that Stiles didn’t have to plan any of it. He doesn’t think he’d have got through it otherwise.

So Stiles finds himself in Aroostook County, Maine. He doesn’t even try and think about the name too long because what the hell? He’s tried looking it up on the map and it was nothing but a tiny speck, and trying to find the town he was actually going to be living in? That wasn’t even on the map. So he’s trying to follow the direction he’s been given, trying to find Wulfstan Village – and he really should have got a motel and waited to finish the trek in the broad daylight.

Stiles doesn’t know how Laura, the mayor of Wulfstan found him or even contacted him, but she got his number and offered him a job. She oohed and awed over Stiles ability at coding and encrypting files and said she desperately needed him. Stiles doesn’t want to toot his own horn but he is pretty fucking amazing at encrypting files. His best friend, Danny is the best hacker around and they often worked together. Stiles would encrypt and Danny would try and hack it – if he could hack it, Stiles would start all over again. It made for pretty healthy competition. They were the best duo around – until Stiles bailed to move to Wulfstan.

The snows starting to pile up and it’s the kind that settles, making it harder to steer. He tries to step on the gas because he can feel the tires starting to stick. He sees a sign for a village, Verdun and he has no idea if he’s going the right way but he prays he is and continues on.

He hardly makes it another few minutes before he feels the tires starting to squeal and the car lurching to a stop. It’s stuck. In the snow. This God forsaken snow. Stiles groans and thumps his head against his steering wheel seriously trying to stop the tears that he feels welling up. He’s tired, that’s his excuse for wanting to cry, and he’s cranky, cold and hungry. He just wants to get there already and go to sleep for a million years.

He turns his head still on the steering wheel to the left to see a line of stores on one side all pitch black, so he turns his head to the right and sees pretty much the same thing. It’s barely gone 9pm and this town seems to be shut – Beacon Hills didn’t even close that early. He lifts his head up and looks farther down the street through the dismal lighting from the lamp posts to see lights further ahead – at least somewhere was open.

He has no other choice but to pop the door open and start the trek to where the light source is coming from. He pockets his cell phone and hopes for the best – because he’s seen the horror movies, okay? He knows what could happen.

By the time he makes it to the establishment his sneakers are soaked through, his socks are sopping and his feet are ice cubes. 26 year old man be dammed, he’s damn well ready to start bawling his eyes out. He looks up at the sign and sees “Argents Tavern” and well no wonder they’re open, a bar, how typical. Stiles shoves the door open and stumbles over the mat at the door, a string of profanities slipping past his lips.

“Drunk already are we?” someone snickers from where they’re seated on the barstool at the bar.

“No, but I could use some alcohol right about now. Any takers? I’m not picky in the slightest” Stiles answers, he stomps his feet on the mat trying to get rid of the snow, not that it helps his freezing feet.

“I’ll get you good and drunk,” a woman sneers from a booth – she’s got to be in her forties, red dishevelled curly hair, drunk as a skunk dressed in plaid and jeans. Maybe Stiles should be a little pickier.

“Can we help you?” a man asks from behind the bar, he slings a towel over his shoulder and crosses his arm narrowing his eyes at Stiles.

“Uh, can I get some help; my car is stuck out back there in the snow. A tow truck or something?”

“Where you headed?” the man behind the bar asks.

“Wulfstan, am I anywhere near there?”

The whole bar, already pretty quiet goes deafeningly so. Those who weren’t already looking at Stiles stop to look at him, the jukebox stops playing and the few men around the pool table are holding their cues in their hand, game abounded.

Stiles eyes scan the room before he speaks, “did I say something wrong?” he asks quizzically.

“Why don’t I help you with that car of yours out there,” the man behind the bar says, he drops his towel on the bar, lifts the part of the wooden counter that acts as an entrance/exit and steps out from behind the bar. He stalks towards Stiles, grabbing a jacket from the wooden coat rack at the front door. The man opens the door and gestures for Stiles to precede him.

Once Stiles it outside he points out into the distance where he abandoned his jeep and starts the miserable walk back.

“Thanks, I’m Stiles by the way,” Stiles says extending his arm to the man.

“Chris,” the barman introduces, returning Stiles hand shake, “so tell me, what brings you out here and to Wulfstan?”

“The mayor offered me a job,” Stiles answers.

“Doing?”

“Encryption.”

Chris narrows his eyes at Stiles and steps a little closer as they walk, Stiles unconsciously moves a step to the left distancing himself from Chris. Stiles tries to chant to himself that Chris is a good guy, he’s going to help him, not murder him and bury him in the snow until his corpse freezes over.

Once they get back to the car, Chris bends down at the front of the jeep inspecting the tires.

“No winter tires?” he asks.

“No,” Stiles answers sheepishly, “where I’m from we hardly get snow or if we do it’s barely enough to cause any damage. I hadn’t expected it to be so… snowy. Abominable snowman anyone?”

“You believe in that kind of stuff?” Chris asks as he straightens himself up giving Stiles a sceptical look.

“What? No, of course not. It was a joke, a bad one apparently.”

“You’ll need some snow tires, ASAP. I can get some tire chains back at the tavern for you; it should get you to wherever you’re going.”

“Oh man, thanks!” Stiles beams.

Chris nods and trudges back to the tavern. Stiles sits in the jeep and plays around with his phone for a while, waiting for Chris to come back. On the bright side Chris doesn’t seem to a complete weirdo, the whole stepping closer to him irked Stiles a little. Not to mention the whole bar going dead quiet when he said he was going to Wulfstan, but he didn’t think much of it.

He sees Chris coming back with a flashlight and box; he hops out of the car and asks if Chris needs any help. He nods his head no saying he can do it, and a few minutes later Stiles’ tires are covered in snow chains ready for the journey to Wulfstan.

“Thanks man, what do I owe you?” Stiles asks.

Chris looks at him funnily and says no charge.

“Wow, small town etiquette at its finest,” Stiles beams, “hey how far off am I from Wulfstan?”

“About five-ten minutes, head straight up along this road just as you were, turn left and you’ll see the signs.”

“I’m that close and my car breaks down? Talk about luck,” Stiles groans.

“At least we got to meet,” Chris smiles. He extends his hand to shake Stiles’ again before he’s saying goodbye.

“Small towns gotta love ‘em,” Stiles thinks as he starts his jeep, pushes down on the gas and feels his car lurch forward, the traction from the tire chains working.

He follows the directions that Chris gave him, turns left when he gets to the intersection and lo and behold he sees the signs.

Wulfstan Village

Population: 982

“Jesus, that’s smaller than Beacon Hills.”

Below the sign there’s an alcove with a candle burning. A single candle, flickering in the dead of the night and Stiles wonders how the hell that candle is still even burning with all the snow. He writes it off as one of those fake ones that have a switch – despite it looks real and continues driving.

Now that he’s here, he doesn’t know what exactly he’s supposed to do. He assumed he’d have arrived during the day when there were people about, and despite it only now being close to 10pm, just like Verdun Village with the local tavern being the only place open, this place was dead quite.

He spots a little sign reading “Great Wolfs Lodge” and decides to pull his car up outside by the curb. He figures getting a room and meeting the mayor, Laura tomorrow will be a better idea than calling her in the middle of the night.

He gets out of the car and grabs his backpack and suitcases out of the car as he tries to trudge them up the little pathway leading to the entrance. Stiles feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and he feels as if someone is watching him, maybe not someone but someone’s like there’s more than one. He shakes the feeling off telling himself he’s just being paranoid and opens the door to the lodge.

Despite their being lights on in the lodge, no one is at the front desk. There’s no bell and he tries calling out, “hello?” but still no one answers. There’s no way in hell he’s going back out to sleep in his car and he really doesn’t think there’d be another motel to sleep in, in this little village. So he drops his bags down in front of a sofa that’s meant to be used by guests. He throws himself on the sofa, kicking off his sodden shoes and socks and hugs the pillows trying to get warm, and fall asleep.

“Great idea Stilinski, great idea,” is the last thing he remembers saying before he falls asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I killed off Papa Stilinski (don’t hate me!), I just couldn’t find a way to incorporate him into the story, other than have him in Beacon Hills on his own while Stiles moved away. And I couldn’t have Papa Stilinski living in that house on his own – just makes me too sad! So the only logic was to kill him..
> 
> The beginning quote is from the 1941 movie, The Wolf Man.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a clearing of a throat, and a finger being jabbed in Stiles ribs that jolts him awake. He falls off the couch landing on top of his suitcase and backpack, the pain jolting through his body.

“Fuck,” Stiles groans, he flips over onto his back to look up at a man that has got to be around his age or so. The man’s wearing black pressed pants and a white button up shirt, his name tag reads Isaac. He has curly blond hair and looks as if he’s trying to suppress a laugh.

“Oh yeah, just laugh at my misery man, what the fuck?” Stiles asks struggling to his feet, “do you work here?”

“Sure do” Isaac answers.

“Well I want to speak to your manager, what kind of places has an open sign but no one at the front desk? I called out and everything, no wonder this place looks deserted the service is subpar.”

“I am the manager,” the guy – Isaac, answers.

“May I suggest another line of work then?” Stiles sneers. He realises that he currently doesn’t have any socks or shoes on and should probably rectify that as soon as possible. He bends down and rummages through his bags until he finds a pair of dry socks and puts them on, despite their being a hole in the big toe area. Whatever.

“Who are you?” Isaac asks tilting his head to the side, he wrinkles his nose – and yeah Stiles realises that he needs to have a shower, which he _would_ have done had he had a room. The man is also giving Stiles a look and not a pleased one, but one that’s ready to pounce and gobble Stiles up – and not in the sexual way, but the purely predatory way.

“Stiles Stilinski,” Stiles says straightening up, “Laura, the mayor hired me to work for her.” Stiles hopes that mentioning Laura will secure him some sort of safety, the closest to diplomatic immunity he can get to.

“Oh! You’re Stiles, well that explains it. I’m Isaac,” Isaac beams; the voracious look vaporising right before his eyes, he has the cutest smile Stiles thinks. And if he weren’t such an ass he’d probably actually do really well in people services. “You should probably head on to Town Hall, she’ll be expecting you.”

“I was kind of hoping to shower first dude,” Stiles sighs looking down at his clothing.

“Right, of course,” Isaac says he walks over to the front desk that was abandoned last night when Stiles came in, rummages around and produces a room key. An actual key, the kind you slide into a lock and everything, not those stupid key cards that hotels use. How authentic. “Room 102, it’s the second one up the stairs,” Isaac explains.

Stiles says his thanks and goes to fetch his bags. Somehow Isaac beats him, getting around the counter and to Stiles’ bags before him. He picks them up with both hands without any effort and starts ahead of Stiles walking up the stairs.

“Um, thanks,” Stiles says after he’s opened his door with the key, he goes to fetch his wallet before Isaac slaps his hand away telling him no need and exits the room, shutting the door behind him. “I could _seriously_ get used to small town life” Stiles jokes to himself.

He doesn’t waste any time looking around his room, although there’s not that much to look at considering it consists of one room, with a bathroom. He grabs some clothes out of his bag, trying to smooth them out – he doesn’t have time to iron them and hops in the shower. He washes his body as quickly as he can, and yet still somehow has time to jerk himself off. He thinks he deserves it considering he managed to make it to Wulfstan, and survive the night last night – his personal reward system that’s been working for him for years now. Why change what’s not broke?

Once Stiles is out of the shower he puts his clothes on as fast as possible and heads back downstairs. He sees Isaac sitting around behind the counter not doing much of anything, although he does perk up once he sees Stiles.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a mechanics around here would you?” Stiles asks.

“Gypsy’s, just down the road. Should be open,” Isaac answers looking down at his watch. He looks back up at Stiles, smiles and wrinkles his nose _again_ , and Stiles doesn’t even know what to make of that because he’s freshly showered. He even used the soap that was in the room, so if Isaac didn’t like the soap, considering he was the manager of the place, he could just change it if he wanted to.

Stiles says his thanks, heads out to his jeep, getting in and tries to find Gypsy’s. Isaac is right; it’s literally just down the road, not even five buildings over from the Lodge. “ _Well that’s handy.”_

He parks his car outside the shop and peeks his head in the garage part, he sees no other cars being worked on and no one in there, so he walks around to the entrance and opens the door, a bell ringing signalling someone’s just walked in.

Stiles is about to call out when a man in dark jeans and a white wife beater smudged black with oil and God knows what else. Though Stiles hardly has time to pay attention to the stains, when he takes in the guy and his _looks –_ the man has got 8 o’clock stubble because 5 o’clock just doesn’t cover it, pale pink lips that look so smooth and the eyes, well Stiles could get lost in those like the sap that he is.

He realises he hasn’t said anything nor has the man, “are you Gypsy?” Stiles blurts out.

The man rolls his eyes, “do I look like a fucking Gypsy kid?”

“The store front says Gypsy’s, I figured that was the owner, and you seem to be the only one in” Stiles explains, “otherwise you might want to think of a new name.”

“What do you want?” the man asks, folding his arms.

“I wanted to buy some ice cream, what the fuck do you think man?”

When the man doesn’t answer only arches his eyebrow at Stiles he continues on, “listen my car needs to get their tries changed and I really have somewhere to be, so can you do it?”

The man strides towards Stiles, brushing past him but not before Stiles notices the man take a not so subtle whiff of Stiles. Stiles is a little flabbergasted because it’s the second person who’s done that in the last hour, and he’s taken a God damn shower and it’s not like he’s going to be smelling of sex or anything, he jerked off in the shower. Stiles finally catches up with the time and follows the man back out the door and he sees the man walking around the car, inspecting it.

“Leave your keys; it’ll take a few hours.”

“Few hours?” Stiles screeches, “there’s no other cars it can’t take that long!” and Stiles doesn’t know why he’s even complaining it appears that he can walk this whole village so it’s not like he’s in a rush to get his car back or anything. Maybe it’s just to piss off this douchebag who’s all strong silent and stoic, the “Triple S” Stiles nicknames him in his head.

“Take it or leave it kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” Stiles scowls but he still fishes his keys out of his pocket and walks towards the mechanic ready to drop it in his waiting hands. “Wait,” Stiles hedges as he tugs his keys back to his chest, “you’re not like going to steal my car or something? The name is Gypsy’s and if you’re not Gypsy, maybe that means you’re one and you’re going to steal my car and live off the lands somewhere else.”

The mechanic snorts, snatches the keys from Stiles’ hands before Stiles even realises his keys are gone, “kid there’s no way I want this piece of shit. Two hours, bring your wallet.”

Stiles doesn’t need to ask for directions to the Town Hall, from outside Gypsy’s he can see a tall white building with columns and an archway, with the words “Town Hall” scrawled in fancy cursive writing. Beside it, is a church the same shade of white with a huge clock and tower bells. With all the white from the snow and buildings, it’s really quite bright in the village and beautiful. There’s a lot of untouched snow on the pathways – Stiles used to love that when they’d get a few inches in Beacon Hills, looking out at the window and seeing untouched snow, he’d run out there and be the first to ruin in.

By the time Stiles enters Town Hall he doesn’t even need to look around before a tall, broad dark man approaches, holding an iPad in one hand and extends his other to Stiles.

“Stiles, glad you made it. My name’s Boyd, I’ll just take you to Laura.”

“Oh wow, this is probably the best reception I’ve gotten since I came to town,” Stiles replies stunned.

“Just takes some getting used to” Boyd smiles back and starts walking motioning for Stiles to follow.

“You can say that again” Stiles mutters.

After climbing a large helical staircase spiralling up to the left the two men reach a large black wooden door where Boyd knocks, opens the door, motions Stiles in and shuts the door leaving Stiles on his own, with the mayor of Wulfstan – Laura Hale.

-

“Enter,” Laura says before Boyd has even knocked – she knows Boyd will still knock though, to keep up pretences and not make it seem like Boyd just barges in on his boss.

She sees a man stumble into the room – Stiles. Stiles is nothing like she expected, she had imagined a man wearing a corduroy jacket with the patches on the sleeve, glasses and a man looking like he was actually in fact a _man_ and not teenage-looking. Okay, well Stiles looked a little teenage-y but he was dressed nicely in slacks and a button up with a blazer over, professional but still casual.

Stiles seems like a fresh of breath air, especially in this old village. His eyes a light shade of brown, frightened or nervous at the least, like a deer caught in headlights. She wonders how Stiles ever managed a job interview before if he’s this nervous even _after_ he’s gotten the job.

“Stiles,” Laura beams standing up from behind her desk, “I’m glad you made it, I heard you arrived last night you should have called no matter the time,” she walks around the desk and extends her hand to Stiles. “Please, have a seat.”

“The town seemed dead last night, I didn’t want to risk waking you up.”

“Village.”

“What?”

“We’re a village, I know it says Town Hall, but Village Hall seems a little weird. Call me picky, but I am the mayor so I’m allowed to be,” Laura laughs.

“Sorry,” Stiles mumbles, “sorry I was late too but I had to drop my car off to get my tires changed and the dude had some serious people issues. You should think about village activities, get the people together or something.”

Laura snickers to herself because she sure as hell knows the mechanic and yeah he could do with some people skills.

“It takes some time for the village to get used to… Outsiders,” Laura explains, “but once everyone gets to know you and you them, it’ll be fine I assure you.”

“So not that I’m complaining, because I’m totally not and very appreciative of the job and the money, why not hire someone locally?”

Laura picks up a pen and starts tapping it on her hardwood desk before she speaks again, as if she’s trying to decide what to say.

“You see,” she starts to explain, “Our village is very, sacred shall we say to the residents here, and there are well other villages and towns that would love to… Expand and we just can’t have that. I hear you’re the best so I hired the best.”

“Well, I’m just gonna take that as a compliment then,” Stiles says.

“You should,” Laura chuckles and goes over everything they talked about on the phone, in person. Stiles is to work five days a week, though some days may be longer and others he’ll get to go home early. Friday nights he gets to home earlier, just because. Apparently Wulfstan is all about their weekends. Once a month Stiles gets the _entire_ day off, Laura lets him know which ones. Weekends are pretty minimal work only if there’s an emergency.

Stiles really cannot complain about this set up because it seems like a hell of a lot less work then he’s used to doing, yet more money than he used to earn. Less work, more money – who complains about that? His only worry was that he might get bored, not having as much work to do but Laura assured him there’d be more than enough to keep him busy.

“So, if that’s all settled you really must come to dinner tonight,” Laura insists after Stiles has signed some papers. He barely had a chance to read over them, but he seems to trust Laura easily enough and it was really only a confidentiality thing. Small villages and their politics, that’s what Stiles, put it down to. “Meet my brother and some others.”

“You really don’t have to go out of your way,” Stiles tries only to have Laura wave her hand at him.

“Stiles, you’re new in town. It’ll do you good to get to know some people. I insist. Who turns down good food and alcohol?”

“You’re right” Stiles says, finally giving in.

Laura obviously pleased with herself ushers Stiles out the door and in the direction of a man named Kirk who can find Stiles somewhere to stay – living out of the Lodge just won’t do.

-

Stiles found the realty office which also doubled as the post office; he didn’t even want to think about it. If he did he might seriously reconsidering his life choices. Kirk was behind the counter in a blue shirt and postal cap on, though he wasn’t actually doing any work. Did people even know anyone _outside_ of this village to receive mail?

Stiles introduces himself telling Kirk that he needs to find a place to live and Kirk seems a little more than thrilled at having something to do. He hops up from the stool behind the counter, takes his cap off and shrugs on a black blazer with a name tag “Kirk Realtors.”

Stiles tries to repress his laugh as Kirk starts to explain about the two available places to rent. Two, only two. They look at the first place which is an apartment over an abandoned restaurant and Stiles says absolutely not. Besides it would be kind of creepy to live above an abandoned place so they move on to the next place.

As they’re walking through the village Stiles starts to see more and more of the residents emerging from stores and walking the streets, although none of them do more than offer a little smile and continue on their way. Stiles didn’t think he would want to be heading back to Verdun to see the people at Argent’s Tavern and the creepy Chris, but right now even they seemed a little friendlier.

They make it to the edge of the village where they stand outside a small blue panelled Dutch Colonial house. Kirk explains that it’s one bedroom, one bathroom with another powder room on the main floor. It’s wood flooring throughout with a large spacious kitchen, family room and an underground basement.

It’s a little rough around the edges and despite it being blue panelled it’s actually kind of quaint. It’s kind of lopsided looking without actually looking like it’s about to fall to shambles. There’s even a small garage a little ways back behind the house for Stiles to park his jeep so it doesn’t get ruined with all the snow.

Kirk tells him its $450 a month and Stiles thinks that’s a fucking bargain, but then again they are in a village it’s not like they have a lot of people looking for homes to rent. So Stiles takes it, going back to the post office/realtors office and signs the lease. He’s ready to move in, which reminds him he needs to go pick up his car from Mr Strong, Silent and Stoic then head to the Wolf Lodge to pick up his bags.

-

Mr Strong, Silent and Stoic only charges him $70 for changing the tires, balancing them and his labour. Yet another bargain but Stiles it not about to complain so he fishes out the cash from his wallet and hands it to the mechanic. The mechanic grunts, pockets the money and heads out behind some back door leaving Stiles on his own.

Laura better be right about this whole “people just need to warm up to the newbie in town,” because Stiles doesn’t think he can survive in a town where no one talks to him. He’ll talk himself to death. Well, at least Boyd and Kirk seemed nice enough and Boyd he might actually to get to see on a regular basis if he works for Laura.

-

Stiles doesn’t have much time to set up his new house or even look around, though there aren’t that many rooms before he starts to get ready to head to Laura’s for dinner. He hopes that this way is at least a way to meet some nice fellow villagers who will actually accept Stiles – he could use a friend or two. He doesn’t want to be the desperate friend Skyping Danny or Lydia his other best friend, while they’re busy with their own lives in Beacon Hills.

He dresses in light brown chinos, a striped black and white shirt with a black jacket over top. He dashes out the door and past his car opting to walk instead of driving despite the cold weather just in case he drinks a little too much tonight. His father used to give him the “safe driving” talk more than the “safe sex” talks and Stiles doesn’t want to find out what passes for a jail in Wulfstan.

-

Stiles is starting to learn that everywhere in this town is walk-able. Following the directions Laura gave him earlier he reaches her house, a rather large beautiful house. It’s an old Victorian, with a front porch and dark green panels that he bets would blend in well with the forest behind her house well in the autumn. Although it stands out in stark contrast against the falling white snow.

He hops up the porch stairs, and before he has a chance to ring the doorbell the door swings open where a pretty girl with blonde curly hair, with her breasts popping out of a sheer white shirt stands. She tilts her head to the side and sweeps her eyes up and down Stiles’ body, there’s a smirk to her face and Stiles doesn’t know if that means she _likes_ what she sees or she’s trying to hide her cringe. Self-esteem issues, Stiles still has them.

“Stiles,” she says in a funny tone like the name tastes funny on her tongue, “glad to finally meet you. You’ve been the talk of the village.”

“Really? Care to show me where all these supposed villagers live?” Stiles retorts.

“Oh they’re just scared of the newbie,” she laughs moving aside and opening the door a little more to let Stiles in, “though you should probably be more scared of us. Come on before the rest come looking for you, thinking I devoured you.”

“Devoured sexually or devoured like a crazy ex stalker/killer?” Stiles asks, and he already feels the blush rising up to his cheeks. The girl – he doesn’t even know her name, is good looking but not his type, she seems catty, more so than Lydia and he doesn’t need to go down any sexually frustrated longings, thank you very much - and he’s still managed to blush like a third grader.

“Erica, leave him alone. At least give him some time to adjust before you start messing with his head,” Boyd says. Boyd! Stiles can deal with Boyd, he likes Boyd already he seems to be the level-headed one. “Come on, dinner’s almost ready.”

Stiles follows after Boyd and Erica, eyes snooping in the rooms as he passes by, though he can’t see much since it’s too dark. They soon enter a large dining room with a table large enough to seat 15 comfortable, there’s candles set in the middle of the table, various plates and bowls stacked at a few of the seats. Stiles can smell something delicious but sees no food anywhere in the room.

“Gypsy, you’re here!” Stiles startles when he sees the mechanic enter the dining room off of another room which Stiles guesses is the kitchen. The man’s got a beer in hand about to take a swig, face turning to a scowl when he sees Stiles. He’s since changed out of his oil-stained jeans and instead wearing similar dark jeans to before – these ones clean though – and a grey long-sleeved shirt that bunches around his impressive muscles and expansive chest. His beard looks as if it’s been trimmed down; to the appropriate 5 o’clock shadow as opposed to the 8 o’clock barbaric beard it was earlier in the day.

“You told him your name was Gypsy?” Laura asks following behind, Isaac following soon after her, “Derek you should know better than to toy with our guest. I don’t need my brother making me look bad now do I?”

“Derek,” Stiles repeats, “ _brother?_ Oh my God and I went on about him needing social skills in your office. How have you not fired me yet? Or are you just planning on feeding me and then firing me because you’re a firm believer in the last meal and all?” Stiles asks running a hand over his face.

“Stiles, relax. Wine?” Laura asks pouring some red wine into a wine glass and hands it to Stiles, “besides I’m well aware my brother needs some social skills but if he got any the village might freak out. We’ve all grown accustomed to it. And Gypsy is real, and the owner of the garage by the way,” Laura informs Stiles.

So Mr Strong Silent and Stoic has a name – Derek, which yeah is a lot more fitting than Stiles’ nickname. He also happens to be Laura’s brother which is just awkward because he’s already gotten off on a bad foot with his boss’ brother. Derek and Laura are quite similar, where Laura is beautiful; Derek is handsome with their dark hair and startling eyes, a mix of greens. If he were paying more attention he probably would have noticed sooner but adjusting to a new town – no, village – is a lot harder so Stiles can hardly blame himself.

-

Stiles ends up learning a lot about the village and all their weird quirks. There’s one of everything, one grocery store, one doctor’s office, one bar etc. with the exception of there being more than one place to eat. There’s also no police station – Stiles doesn’t know whether he thinks that’s reassuring or not. On one hand, is the village that safe that there isn’t a need for the police, or are they just too cheap? Majority of those that lives in Wulfstan were born and grew up here, their parents and their parents’ parents living and growing up here so it really is a case of everyone knowing _everyone._

The most interesting thing Stiles learned was the candle he saw lit in the alcove when he was driving into Wulfstan is actually a _real_ candle that’s always lit, day or night, rain or shine and apparently when the flame goes out – danger is coming.

Stiles chokes on the piece of potato he’s eating banging his chest and takes a huge gulp of wine.

“I’m sorry, you think a candle is forewarning for danger?” Stiles asks incredulously. “I mean with that logic why not just ring the church bells when the danger is coming?” Stiles jokes.

“That is the backup” Laura answers seriously, setting her fork and knife down on the plate.

“ ** _Laura,_** ” Derek cautions rolling his eyes. “She’s joking.”

“Way to ruin all the fun,” Erica interjects.

Laura chuckles taking a sip of her wine, “sorry it’s just so easy, you can tell we don’t get a lot out “outsiders.”

“And here I thought you were going to be my saviour!” Stiles jokes pointing his fork in Laura’s direction jokingly. “Yet Gypsy over here,” Stiles nods towards Derek, “is the one being semi-sane.”

The rest of the dinner goes by quickly and Stiles finds he’s enjoying himself a lot more than he thought he initially would, everyone is nice, including Derek who doesn’t talk so much as grunts out responses when spoken to, but it could be worse. The group take a genuine interest in Stiles and his past and for a man who can talk a persons’ ear off Stiles becomes flustered talking about himself, if you want to talk about the male circumcision, coding or just about anything else, Stiles would be fine.

“So what’s with the one day a month of no work?” Stiles questions.

Now it’s Derek’s turn to cause a commotion, not by choking on any food but the bang of his beer bottle hitting the table. Stiles startles looking at Derek, then to Laura and the rest of the table trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. It’s not like he could have possibly said anything rude, it was a genuine question that he’d forgotten to ask at his meeting with Laura.

“It’s an old village tradition,” Laura explains. “It’s been going on since before any of us were born, so we figure why not continue.”

“Well who am I to complain,” Stiles smiles polishing off his glass of wine.

After Derek’s random outburst or whatever it would be called, dinner seems to go smoothly.

“I should get going, don’t want to be late for my first day of work. I hear my boss is a real hard ass,” Stiles teases after he’s finished his dessert – rocky road cake with coffee.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Laura says as she gets up at the same time as Stiles.

“Later Erica, Boyd, Isaac, Gypsy,” Stiles waves.

“Stop calling me that,” Derek growls while Erica and Boyd snicker and say their goodbyes. Isaac just nods his head.

Once Stiles is out the door and on his way home he’s pleased to say that it went well. He also hasn’t thought about “home” so much, as he thought he would but he supposes that’s what happens when there’s nothing left to go back to.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points for whoever can guess what fictional town this is based off of.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles strolls into town hall the following morning - only feeling the slight effects of his previous night’s drinking - not really sure what to expect. He walks up the staircase Boyd had led him up the day before, to find Boyd sitting at a desk outside of Laura’s office that seemed to serve as his own office. There were pieces of papers and notes stacked everywhere on his desk, and bookcases lining the hallway with old leather-bound books.

Boyd smiles and greets Stiles a good morning, only to lead him back down the stairs he’d just come up. He shows him a small kitchen that has a coffee machine, table and fridge that he can use. He proceeds to direct Stiles downstairs, to the basement of the town hall where he hands Stiles a key card on a lanyard to access a large open room full with computers, hard-drives and other dauntingly large machines.

“Your office,” Boyd smiles opening his hands to gesture to the whole basement.

Stiles whistles, taking the whole room in – that’s a lot of computer and machines, and they’re all _his._ He tries not to think of how amazing his gaming experience would be using these machines, he has to remind himself that this is where he works, not where he plays. If he could get this set up in his new house basement though, he wouldn’t complain.

“Just be careful if you bring a drink down there, one spill and the whole system is fried.”

“Yeah you haven’t known me long enough but you’ll soon learn I’m a klutz. I was voted most likely to trip over a cordless phone in high school. I’ll have to keep my coffee in a tumbler or something,” Stiles snorts.

Boyd laughs and leads him to a large desk that’s stacked with a few papers, pens and various office supplies.

“These are the files that need to re-encrypted by priority. The one with red tabs need to be done immediately, and then work through the rest, please.”

“Got it,” Stiles says making a salute from his forehead as he settles into the large comfy leather chair. He’s even more surprised when his feet hit something under the desk and that’s when Stiles realises it’s one of those foot massaging machines people have under their office desks. Laura spares no expenses when it comes to her employees it seems.

Stiles settles in, looking at the pages in front of him, finding the files on the computer and gets to work. His job doesn’t exactly entail looking or paying attention to exactly what he’s encoding, so long as it’s encoded to the max so that no one can break in. But he does end up seeing some things that stick in his mind, without even trying.

He sees invoices for various things that he’s never heard of like, wolfs bane, mountain ash and other words that he can’t even pronounced that looked to be written in Latin. He has no idea what the hell this stuff if used for, are they drug dealers? Holistic people who believe in the au natural way? He also finds blueprints of various buildings and underground tunnels. Whatever it is he tells himself, is not his business – his job is to code and keep his mouth shut.

What _does_ concern him is when he sees the invoices for weapons, there’s some for guns, bullets, bow and arrows and various other things. Why the hell is Wulfstan – Laura – buying all these things, when they don’t even have a police station? That’s what’s frightening because he really doesn’t want to think about these people taking matters into their own hands.

Stiles doesn’t know if any of these things he’s seen is illegal, he knows buying weapons isn’t illegal as long as there’s all the proper paperwork and all that – so he continues coding. If he finds out that any illegal doings are going on, he’ll quit. Money be damned, he’s not going down for aiding or something along those lines.

He doesn’t even realise as the hours pass by, he skipped lunch. When he looks at his clock he realises it’s almost 6pm. He rubs at his eyes that are way too tired, saves his coding and shuts off the computer. Putting in a 9 hour day on his first day on the job isn’t a bad start; he definitely got _a lot_ done.

-

It’s about time Stiles gets some grocery shopping done, eating a granola bar that he found in the “staff room” at Town Hall didn’t constitute a healthy breakfast meal, and he didn’t have any lunch and going home to an empty fridge didn’t seem all that appealing.

He remembers passing Doose’s, the towns’ one and only grocery store and heads in that direction. He still notices people on the street, looking at him without even _trying_ to be discreet – yet still no one talks to him. Granted it’s his second full day in this village, he thought his arrival would become old news and people would actually start _talking_ to him – Laura said they’d warm up, but how long is that going to take?

Stiles opens the door to Doose’s, another little bell ringing indicating a new customer – and what is with this village and bells? Anyone in the store, which is about four or five customers, and one employee on the checkout direct their gaze to the new entrant in the store. Great.

“You must be Stiles!” One of the customers said, rushing over to shake Stiles’ hand, “I’m Taylor Doose, I own the supermarket. Welcome to Wulfstan, do you need a tour of the store?” Okay, so this guy wasn’t a customer but the owner, dressed casually in corduroy pants and a chunky cream knitted sweater.

Stiles’ eyes scan the store, which is no more than 10 aisles; he could lap this store in less than four minutes. “Nice to meet you,” Stiles beams, he might as well be polite if he wants to make any friends, even an elderly man like Taylor who has a greying white beard, hair on the sides of his head but none on the crown. “I believe I can manage a little grocery shopping on my own. Believe it or not, I’ve done it before.”

Taylor narrows his eyes at Stiles, and then nods his head. “Well just holler if you need any help,” and with that he’s walking back to the cabbage display and moving them around until they’re in a position he likes.

Stiles clucks his tongue and picks up a wicker basket, he sometimes forgets that not everyone appreciates his sarcasm and he needs to ease them into it, like you would a baby learning to potty train – you don’t just chuck it at them.

It’s reassuring to Stiles - as he walks up and down the aisles taking a little more than the four minutes he’d predicted – to see that there are the same brands of food he used to eat in Beacon Hills. He doesn’t know what exactly he was expecting, maybe knock-off brands of food like “GIF Peanut Butter” instead of the proper “JIF Peanut Butter,” thankfully it’s the latter and not the former.

He drops the JIF extra creamy Peanut Butter in his basket, followed up by some cream crackers and Wonder Bread. Stiles gets to the cereal aisle and pretends to contemplate between Lucky Charms and Raisin Bran, even though he knows before he even has time to actually think about it, that he’ll get the Lucky Charms. Continuing along the unhealthy path that he’s on he picks up some marshmallows, a box of Jos Louis’, a few boxes of mac and cheese, and some frozen TV dinners – you’d think Stiles was still in his freshman year of college with the array of food he’s chosen.

Not to be a completely horrendous eater, he picks a few Pink Lady apples – because they’re the best, right after Red Delicious apples and some bananas. Stiles notes the way Taylor follows right behind him and starts fixing the apple display so that they’re evenly distributed – OCD much?

It may be a small supermarket, but the cashier – Dean – scans his groceries through and bags them in brown paper bags for Stiles, _actually_ making small talk with Stiles. He asks how Stiles is liking Wulfstan so far, to which Stiles graciously replies “ _I’ll have to give it more time,”_ to where Stiles originally lived. Stiles is just grateful, no matter how small the talk is, to actually be having a conversation – not one where he’s muttering to himself and the computer screen when something doesn’t go his way.

At least his new office consists only of him, so no one gives him any strange looks. Back when he used to work with Danny, Danny got used to Stiles’ talking to himself and his computer, but their other co-workers always shot Stiles a dirty look, like he was messing up their coding – which he probably was.

Stiles thanks Dean, after he says that he should head to the local diner sometime soon – Luke’s – because he and his girlfriend frequent there and he’s sure she’d love to meet Stiles. He nods his head enthusiastically, saying he’ll see them around sometime (which isn’t hard in a goddamn _village)_ and leaves the shop juggling his two paper brown bags, one in each hand.

He makes it a whole two, maybe three steps before he feels his feet skid on something, his legs flying out from underneath him and his back hits the cold, snowy pavement – his bags thrown in the air, contents flying out and scattering around him, like confetti. Stiles lands on his right wrist, feeling it give from underneath him, and hears a cracking noise, pain instantly shooting up through his wrist and fingers.

“ **Fuuuuuuuck** ,” Stiles drawls out, “fuckity fuck, fuck fuck.”

He brings his wrist up to look at it, sees it’s at a bit of a strange angle letting it flop back to the ground and doesn’t even try and move or get up. Because _this_ is his luck, he hardly has any patience for snow, not having had to deal with an abundance of it in Beacon hills. First his car gets stuck, now he’s managed to fuck his wrist up what next? Doesn’t shit come in threes or something?

“Dude, you alright?” Someone asks jogging up to where Stiles is on his back – and how the hell has this guy not fallen over, snow traction on his shoes? “Are you hurt?” There’s a man kneeling next to him now, with brown eyes and shaggy dark hair, his face is flushed a little red, probably from the cold – and no wonder he’s only in a red hoodie and jeans. He’s got a bit of a baby face and looks so earnest.

“Does it look like I’m alright man?” Stiles counters struggling to sit up.

“No,” the man chuckles, “that’s why I came over. It’s a figure of speech genius.”

Okay, Stiles likes this guy, this guy understands the language of sarcasm.

“Let me take a look at your wrist,” the guy says, gently taking Stiles’ injured right hand in his and starts to move it back and forth gently, testing it.

“Ow! Dude, do you not see it’s at a weird angle? Moving it isn’t going to help. Do you even know what you’re doing, are you a doctor?”

The guy laughs again, looks at Stiles’ sheepishly before answering, “no I’m not a doctor, well I am a vet but not a people doctor. My mom’s a nurse though,” he finishes, shrugging.

“Well maybe you could take me to your _mother_ and let her have a look at it?” Stiles sighs.

“I was just going to suggest that, jeez talk about impatience. You must be from the big city.”

“Ha man _anything_ is a big city compared to this village!” Stiles interjects getting to his feet, the man’s hands on Stiles’ upper arms to support him.

“Touché. I’m Scott McCall, by the way,” he goes to shake Stiles’ hand but realises he can’t due to Stiles’ injured wrist, laughs a little and just fist punches Stiles in the arm lightly.

Scott bends down and starts to cram all of Stiles’ groceries back into the paper bags, lifts them up and tells Stiles to follow after him, and to be careful. Stiles snorts at that, muttering something about “ _no shit,”_ under his breath but follows nonetheless.

They round a corner near what looks like a barn, entering through a side door of what looks like a house, but Stiles soon realises has been converted into offices, doctor offices. There’s a counter that has a bowl full of candies and a telephone, the reception, though no one is there, with a few chairs in front of the reception area, and two doors along an adjacent wall, both closed. There’s a hallway past the farthest door that Stiles assumes is where the front entrance is, with stairs leading upstairs, to whatever is up there.

“Moooom?” Scott yells, when the closest door to them opens and a woman with brown eyes the same shade as Scott’s, brown long curly hair half put up in white scrubs with random patterns all over that Stiles can’t decipher.

“What is it now Scott?” the woman starts, but stops abruptly when she sees Stiles. “Oh what happened sweetie?” she asks rushing towards Stiles when she sees his limping wrist.

Stiles _really_ appreciates that she doesn’t ask “are you okay?” because it’s pretty evident that he’s not, his face is contorted in pain and his wrist still feels like heat radiating from his wrist all up his fingers. The woman – Scott’s mother – ushers Stiles into the room she’d been in, telling him to hop up on the exam table.

As Scott’s mom is examining Stiles’ wrist, all up close and person he can’t help but notice how gorgeous she is. She seems to have probably been around the age as Stiles father would have been, maybe a few years younger, but her skin still looks smooth, almost wrinkle-free, her eyes deep in concentration but also radiating empathy, trying not to hurt Stiles as she moves his wrist around. If Stiles were still interested in woman, she’d be a total MILF. But she’s also kind of reminds Stiles of his own mom, when she’d kiss his bruises better and give him one of her homemade cookies.

Stiles glances up when he hears Scott make a noise, something like a groan from the back of his throat, which confuses Stiles. Considering he’s the one in the exam table getting his wrist examined and Scott is the one without any injuries.

“It seems to be moderate sprain, only partial ligament tearing and some joint instability. I’ll just put some ice on it for 15 minutes or so and then wrap your wrist up in a compression. Try and keep it elevated as much as possible, especially at night. Keep icing it for no more than fifteen minutes at a time until the swelling goes down. I’ll give you some Tylenol as well.”

“Thanks Ms McCall,” Stiles says as she gently lowers a blue-gel ice pack onto his wrist.

“Call me Melissa, please,” she smiles, “any friend of Scott is a friend of mine.”

“Oh yeah, we’re best buds,” Scott jokes.

“Damn straight,” Stiles adds.

Melissa finishes wrapping up Stiles’ wrist and hands him a bottle of Tylenol. “You should come around for dinner sometime; I suppose you could bring Scott along.”

“Mooom!” Scott whines, you’d think he were in high school.

Stiles laughs saying he’d like that, and winks at Scott. Scott gives him a dirty look but still picks up Stiles’ grocery shopping and heads out the door they came in.

“You hungry?” Scott asks when they’re back outside, “we could drop this stuff back at your place if you’ve got cold bits and then go to Luke’s diner.”

“Sure thing,” Stiles smiles.

-

They’ve finally made it to Luke’s diner; Stiles just told Scott to drop the shopping on the counter and put away the milk so it wouldn’t spoil. Stiles wasn’t as creeped out as he should be that Scott knew where he lived. He reminded himself that it was a small village, there weren’t _that_ many places to live and it was nothing more than pure deductive reasoning.

“What do you want?” someone grunts, coming up to their table. The man, Stiles presumes is the owner is wearing a blue plaid shirt – the lumber jack kind, a blue backwards baseball cap and a pair of jeans with what looks like construction boots.

“I’ll have the regular, burger and fries, chocolate milkshake. Thanks Luke,” Scott answers as Luke nods.

“Man, everything looks good here,” Stiles says his eyes scanning over the menu, “I don’t even know what to order, maybe everything!”

“Kid, what do you want?” the man – Luke grunts again.

“I’ll have the cobb salad,” Stiles starts, “wait no. The cheesy fries.”

Luke nods and starts to walk away before Stiles hollers, “wait! I’ll have the burger and fries too, cheesy fries though and a coffee.”

Luke turns around, crosses his arms over his chest, “you think you really need the coffee?”

“Excuse me doesn’t the _paying_ customer get to decide what he needs or does not need?” Stiles glares.

Luke mutters “ _your choice”_ and walks around the counter, repeating the order to the cook in the back.

“If you love your coffee don’t get on Luke’s bad side,” Scott jokes, “he serves the best and the only coffee around.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Stiles sighs.

They get into a comfortable conversation while they’re waiting for their food. Scott tells Stiles about his life as a vet, which is conveniently located on the upstairs floor of the Doctor’s office. They talk about what there is to do around town, to which Scott full out laughs and says there’s the local bar, House of Wolf where there’s a few pool tables, dart boards and a few other things to do. Scott suggests that they should go there sometime.

“So I may be a bit optimistic in asking, or remotely delusional; your choice, but is there a gym around here? I like running but I’m not about to go for a run with all this snow, considering you know…” Stiles holds up his wrist to Scott, a silent ‘I already have bad luck; I don’t need to make it any worse by _actually_ running in the snow.’

“It’s not exactly a gym, but that barn we passed when we were going to the doctor’s, we normally use it as a meeting place, but it’s also a multi-functional place, there are a few gym equipment pieces there. We normally just push them to the side when we need room. The door is usually unlocked, so make yourself at home.”

“You’d think it would be a hassle to move equipment all the time,” Stiles notes but nods his head anyway. Running would do him some good when he wants to relieve some stress or anxiety, until the spring rolls around and he can run outside.

Their food arrives shortly after, Luke practically sliding the food along the table almost as if daring the food to go flying and spluttering all over Stiles. Stiles _was_ about to retort something, but the smell of burger and fries and coffee stopped him short. He was hungrier than pissed, so he said his thanks and dug in. The burger was orgasmic, Stiles moaning as he chewed the food, cramming some cheesy fries in as well.

“So you have a girlfriend back home?” Scott asks taking a sip of his milkshake.

“No,” Stiles admits, “I didn’t have a boyfriend either.”

The few other patrons in the diner, all having their own conversations stopped short to look over at Stiles’ and Scott’s table. Stiles raises his eyebrow, looks at the other customers who all fail at hiding their snooping abilities, shrugs and takes another bite of his burger.

Scott laughs before answering, “well then I don’t have to worry about you trying to steal my girlfriend.”

“Oh I don’t know I’m not too picky. Whatever catches my interest, catches my interest,” Stiles winks at Scott, “kidding, you’re like a puppy dog or any other baby animal that girls just couldn’t resist. Me? I’m the opposite. I’d love to meet your girlfriend though, where is she, what’s her name?”

Scott’s eyes scan the room, Stiles isn’t sure what exactly he’s looking for before answering in a quiet voice, “she doesn’t live in the village, but you can meet her soon.  Her name is Allison.”

“Cool bro,” Stiles nods his head and finishes off his meal.

They finish off their meals and pay, before Stiles heads home to ice and elevate his pathetically injured wrist. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably update again by the end of the week-ish since I already have the next few chapters done anyway! More Derek & Stiles interaction next chapter, I guess I should mention it's a slow-ish build. Yeah I have a thing for -ish.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s a few days later and things have gotten to a certain level of normalcy. Stiles goes into work every morning, sees Boyd and nods his hello, sometimes he sees Laura. Stiles remembers to actually take his lunch break, and Boyd has started planning his lunch plans around the same time as Stiles, so they sit in the small break room and talk.

Boyd relentlessly makes fun of Stiles and his injured wrist, asking what kind of person manages to slip outside of a supermarket. Stiles counters there was no salt placed anywhere and if anything, he should sue! He even jokes about bringing it up with the village mayor. Boyd laughs, then calms down enough to ask if his wrist is healing. Stiles nods his head, raises his wrist and shows the compression on it, says it’ll be good in a few days – or so Ms McCall says.

Stiles learns that Boyd and Erica are an item, which Stiles had figured as much from the dinner at Laura’s. He also learns that Isaac is single, Derek aka Gypsy is single and Scott is always walking the line of being single, and in a relationship. When Stiles asks if Laura is in a relationship, Boyd laughs saying he doesn’t get involved in his boss’ business, but then nods his head no, she’s single too.

“You remember Kirk, the guy that showed you your rental?” Boyd asks, “he’s single and gay, if you’re interested,” Boyd winks and laughs when he sees Stiles’ face, full or horror.

“Is that the best you have to offer in this town?” Stiles groans, “I may have to outsource my sexual escapades to another town.”

“Isaac plays both sides,” Boyd tells Stiles.

“Him and I got off on a bad foot,” Stiles actually looks a little embarrassed remembering his first encounter with Isaac, talking about hospitality and people skills. Then again, he did the same with Derek; he really knows how to make a first impression.

“Just don’t let your personal life interfere with your work; Laura will have your head and then my head.”

“Don’t piss off the boss lady, got it” Stiles salutes.

Not only does Stiles enjoy his job, and his lunches with Boyd, he’s almost not the village freak. Whether it’s from people seeing him at the diner with Scott, or he really is old news but people start to talk to him on the streets. They’ll call out “ _hey Stiles”_ or “ _how are you Stiles?”_ and Stiles appreciates it, nodding his head, smiles and answers. The few times he’s re-entered Luke’s diner - much to Luke’s disdainful glare and repeated “ _you don’t need this much coffee”_ – and sat by himself, some people have pulled up a seat and asked if they could sit. It was always nice to have some company.

Stiles notices the few times that Derek’s in the diner, sometimes by himself sitting at the bar, talking to Luke or just eating and sometimes with other people, usually Isaac – and Stiles wonders if maybe they’re a thing. He contemplates asking Boyd, but then Boyd might think that Stiles really is interested in Isaac or worst yet Laura might somehow find out and think that Stiles is interested in her brother. He really doesn’t need to make an ass out of himself, to find out that Isaac’s not at all interested in him (and even though Stiles isn’t interested, it’s still a blow to the ego) or find out that Derek isn’t gay and somehow ends up offending him.

Though sometimes Derek looks at Stiles like he’s personally offended him anyway, by merely existing. Who knows maybe Derek was the “queen bee” before Stiles showed up and now Stiles is big news. Unlikely, but it’s the only plausible explanation Stiles can come up with. Or, he’s still pissed about the Gypsy thing – which actually makes more sense.

-

A few nights later, a Thursday night, Stiles is sitting at home on his bed scrolling through Facebook shamelessly stalking his old friends. Danny and Lydia are still in Beacon Hills, though Lydia just went on some tropical vacation with her douchebag of a boyfriend Jackson. Jackson and Stiles only ever put up with each other or else they’d have to face the wrath of Lydia. Some of his old college friends have scattered throughout America, others gone as far as Europe. He wonders if they’re living a lush, luxurious life in different European cities, or hitting up the new openings of clubs, the kinds that calls for exclusivity and privacy.  

While Stiles is at home, under a pile of blankets, eating a bag of chips getting crumbs everywhere. He contemplates writing a status about how _wonderful_ Wulfstan is, just to make his fellow Facebook friends jealous – but really, there’s _nothing_ whatsoever to be jealous of. So he continues scrolling, like’s peoples statues, comments on pictures then sighs and signs out before he becomes even more depressed and heads for the beer in his fridge.

He opens up a show that he illegally downloaded because he doubts that FBI or whoever it is polices these kinds of affairs are concerned with Wulfstan and starts watching the gruesome murders unfolding getting lost in a show, and not his own life.

Halfway through the show his phone buzzes and Stiles nearly knocks his laptop off the bed, scrambling to see who could possibly be texting him, excited at the prospect. He smiles when he sees its Scott; they’ve become good friends these past few days.

**From: Scott**

“ _House of Wolf tomorrow night? Time for a proper night out”_

**To: Scott**

“ _Fuck yes, I plan on drinking until I blab my real name”_

**From: Scott**

“ _Stiles isn’t your real name? Oh now I’ve gotta know!”_

**To: Scott**

_“You’ll have to get me drunk”_

**From: Scott**

_“Dude! I have a GF”_

Stiles laughs, tosses his phone on the bed and resumes his show. At least he has plans to look forward to, maybe he’ll mention it to Boyd tomorrow at lunch and he can invite Erica. Though Stiles think that may be detrimental to his health.

-

Stiles shucks out of his jacket and hangs it up on the empty coat rack in the bar. What is it with these people and not wearing jackets? Stiles wonders, and how the hell have none of them caught pneumonia yet. He’s dressed in a black button up dress shirt, with a pair of blue jeans that aren’t exactly skinny to the point where his balls can’t breathe, but not baggy either. Years of hanging out with Danny and Lydia, constantly reminding him that for a gay man his style sucks – has now finally managed to dress somewhat decent.

Stiles looks around and is genuinely surprised to see House of Wolf is packed. It’s probably the busiest most congested place Stiles as seen since moving here, other than Luke’s – but then again what else is there to do in a small village? Besides have sex, and after what, an hour tops including foreplay you’re done? Might as well get a few drinks in first.

There’s music coming from speakers hidden somewhere in the bar, The Pot by Tool – Stiles only remembers the one (okay maybe it was a few more than one) time he got high with Danny and some of his friends from college, and listened to Tool for hours on end staring at the album cover by Alex Grey, enchanted by all the colours and swirls. Now, without the weed Stiles has an appreciation for both Tool and Alex Grey.

Scott claps him on the back and leads him towards the bar, Scott orders a beer and Stiles orders a vodka and soda. For once in his entire life, well since turning 21, he doesn’t get asked for ID. Either because they already know he’s over 21, or they just don’t give a fuck. Their drinks are handed to them, shortly after and they cheers their drink, to a good night.

It doesn’t take long for Boyd and Erica is saddle up to where they’re sitting at the bar with their drinks, asking how they are. Stiles looks around and notices that Kirk is here, Laura walked in a few minutes ago with some other girls, Luke from the diner, even old Taylor Doose. Stiles spots Isaac sitting at one of the booths, Derek across from him. Only Derek is staring right back at Stiles, his eyes intent and unwavering. Stiles doesn’t know what to do so he nods his head in Derek’s direction and looks away, re-joining the conversation in front of him.

They talk about senseless things, laughing and pounding back drinks, Stiles has lost count of how many vodka’s he’s had, he is at least smart enough to stick to the vodka, and not mix his drinks. Erica even pulls him up to dance when some classic rock song, that he doesn’t know starts thumping in the bar – Stiles protests saying Boyd might kill him, and she’s not his type. Boyd laughs and tells him Stiles is more than welcome to dance with Erica, it’ll give him a break.

If Stiles didn’t at least have one drink in him, he doesn’t think he’d be dancing, but Erica gets her hands on Stiles’ shoulders and starts to sway and Stiles doesn’t think it’s all the bad, so he closes his eyes and lets the beat of the music take over, moving his body in what he hopes is somewhat in rhythm.

 As he opens his eyes Stiles gaze falls in Derek’s direction, and he sees Derek staring at him, in that same unwavering way that makes him think that maybe his fly is open or he’s spilled a drink down his shirt. He closes his eyes again and continues dancing until the end of the song with Erica, then re-join the group.

“Another beer, vodka and soda,” Derek says pushing his way in between the bar stool where Erica’s sitting and the space where Stiles is standing. The bartender nods, handing the drinks to Derek. Derek slides the vodka and soda towards Stiles.

“Uh, thanks Gypsy,” Stiles says, scrunching his eyebrows together but still picks the drink up and takes a sip.

Derek nods his head, looks behind him at Erica, and Boyd who’s standing with his arms around Erica’s waist. Boyd laughs, and tugs Erica off the stool leading her towards the booth where Isaac is sitting by himself. Derek perches on the edge of the stool, facing Stiles, one foot on the ground the other resting on the metal ring near the base.

“Man where’s my drink?” Scott asks shooting Derek a sad look, or what he hopes is a sad look. Derek raising his eyebrow at Scott before Scott slinks away joining the rest of the gang at the booth.

“I told you to stop calling me that,” Derek rumbles speaking barely loud enough to hear over the thumping of music.

“All the more reason why I’ll continue to call you that,” Stiles smirks polishing off his drink slamming it down on the bar.

 “What the hell happened to your hand?” Derek nods towards the compression around Stiles’ wrist, blending well into his black button up shirt.

“Oh, you know a boxing accident. I was hitting the bag too hard.”

“I heard it was because you fell flat on your ass outside of Doose’s.”

“Then why’d you ask!” Stiles sputters.

Derek just smirks taking a swig of his beer.

“Sadistic much?” Stiles asks.

“Only if they enjoy it,” Derek answers staring Stiles’ in the eye.

And okay, that’s unnerving. Stiles fakes a laugh, looking anywhere but at Derek. He looks down at the bar, moving his glass back and forth, ruining the ring of condensation caused by the ice on the counter. He runs his finger over the trail of water.

“Another drink?”

“You buying?” Stiles asks finally looking Derek in the eye again.

“You got a better offer?”

“Well played Gypsy, sure.”

Derek huffs, but Stiles just smirks, nods at the bartender and points at his drink. Another one is served to him in a matter of minutes.

“Don’t you ever get bored here?”

“I grew up here,” Derek answers.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Stiles throws his uninjured hand up, “I grew up in a small town and I got bored, fast.”

“I have no reason to get bored; I have my friends and family here.”

“Haven’t you run out of people to sleep with yet? I mean it must get incestuous.”

“You offering?” Derek asks at the same time that he goes to take a drink of his second beer. Stiles can’t help but notice the way those lips wrap around the head of the bottle, and wow are those lips soft looking and so pink.

“What? No. Of course not” Stiles gulps, turning so he’s facing the bar and not Derek.

“It’s not like it’s not in the realm of possibility, I have heard you’re gay,” Derek shrugs, pushing off of the bar stool into Stiles’ personal space before setting down his beer bottle and heading back towards the booth where everyone scurried off to before.

“Huh,” Stiles says, wondering what the hell just happened.

“Ready to get out of here?” Scott asks, returning once Derek walked away.

“Ready,” Stiles nods pushing his encounter with Derek to the back of his mind, because he has no idea what to even make of it.

Even with a few drinks in his system, Stiles manages not to fall flat on his ass, no black ice, nothing. He’s also thankful that tomorrow is Saturday, and he gets to _sleep_ in. He’s going to make a cocoon and stay there for as long as humanly possible, until he has to piss or get food, whichever comes first.

“How come your girlfriend couldn’t come out?” Stiles asks, as they continue their walk. Stiles had insisted it wasn’t necessary for Scott to walk him home; he’s capable of getting home and sure no one is going to attack him. Scott waved his hand saying he didn’t mind, he liked the fresh air. Whatever.

“Um, Allison lives in Verdun the town next to us. Her dad hates me,” Scott answers looking a little embarrassed.

“Verdun, I was there!” Stiles exclaims, throwing his arms out to balance himself, almost slipping. Scott’s hands are on his arm in an instant holding him up. “I met this guy, Chris? What’s up with them, they’re all sketchy as fuck.”

“Chris Argent?!” Scott exclaims, “that’s her dad, Allison’s dad!”

“The guy that owns the tavern? He was the most sketch of them all, though he did help me with my car.”

“Did you tell him you were coming here?” Scott asks seriously.

“Uh, yeah? Why?”

“Nothing,” Scott says trying to play it off, “they’re just big on politics.”

“’Kay, well I still expect to meet this Allison sometime.”

They finally reach Stiles’ house, fishing out his house keys from his pocket and walks up the few stairs to get to the front door. Stiles says his thanks for a good night and he’ll see Scott around. Just as Stiles is about to lock his front door, he hears Scott yell through the door “Hey I never found out your first name!”

“You’ll never find out!” Stiles yells through the door, chuckling and stumbles his way up the stairs, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes, falling into bed in just his boxers drifting into a comfortable state of unconsciousness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay for more Derek, but nope no porn yet. That's for latersss.


	5. Chapter 5

On Saturday morning, Stiles wakes up around 11:30 to his phone buzzing insistently from where it’s laying on the ground still in his jeans. He contemplates ignoring it, but it buzzes repeatedly. He rolls over, keeping the warm cocoon that he’s in intact and only slides his hand out of the duvet to fish around on the ground. He grabs hold of his jeans, and slides them over and picks the phone out of the pocket. He brings the phone into his mini fortress and reads the multiple texts that he has.

**From: Number Unknown**

_You and Derek? ;)_

**From: Scott**

_You alive?_

**From: Scott**

_Man, you and Derek?  You dirty dog & you could totally do better I hear Kirk is available!_

Stiles groans, trying to figure out what the hell prompted Scott and whoever the hell else just texted him to think he was remotely even interested in Derek? First all of, Derek was sexy as fuck – yes, there was no denying that, and Stiles didn’t think himself _ugly_ or anything he just didn’t see him and Derek that way? He doesn’t know he hasn’t had enough time to analyse it. Besides, he needs to be focusing on work, and not getting laid, however tempting the thought of sex is.

**To: Scott**

_Me and Derek = not happening. What gave you that idea, and isn’t he with Isaac? I’ll pass on Kirk._

**To: Number Unknown**

_Who is this?_

The number unknown texted back almost immediately.

**From: Number Unknown**

_Erica ;) Boyd gave me your #_

**To: Erica**

_I should have known! And a dude buying another dude a drink does not mean sex._

**From: Erica**

_Boyd bought me a drink and I slept with him ;)_

Stiles pointedly ignores Erica’s text because he does not need to be involved in any village gossip, he only just got over being the newbie around. He doesn’t need a new bit of gossip trailing behind him.

**From: Scott**

_Ew Isaac is like his little bro_

Well that confirms that Stiles supposes, not that it makes a difference one way or another, not to Stiles.

The rest of the weekend goes by uneventfully, Stiles stays in Saturday sleeping off his hangover, watches TV and eats his mac and cheese in bed. Sunday he heads into the village square just to get out and about, feeling the itch to get outside and stretch his legs. He heads to Luke’s (because where else is he going to go?) to see that it’s packed in there. Stiles sees Scott and Isaac and some others sitting at a table and Scott waves him over, standing up to fetch a chair from another table so Stiles can sit.

This time, Stiles is smart enough to glance at the menu quickly and picking the first thing that he sees – pancakes with extra whipped cream, and a coffee – before Luke gets to the table and threatens to bite his head off. For some reason, Stiles really wouldn’t put it past Luke. He seems like the kind of guy that likes to spend time in the woods, camping, fishing, building a fire and all that manly man stuff.  

“So was I the first person to stay in Great Wolf’s Lodge or what?” Stiles asks Isaac through a mouthful of the most delicious, fluffiest pancakes he’s ever eaten. He takes back any mean thing he’s thought about Luke these past few days – he’s a God sent down to earth to cook orgasmic food.

“There was one other” Isaac shrugs.

“Did he bolt outta here?”

“He died,” Isaac replies dryly, “the very room you stayed in.”

“But seriously, what do you even do all day?”

“We help each other out; we’re not set to one particular job.”

“No one helps me out,” Stiles snorts.

“You’re kind of the genius with the computer, or so Laura says,” Scott interrupts.

Stiles doesn’t gloat because that’s beneath him, okay he doesn’t gloat _publically_ because in his head he’s mentally patting himself on the back, thinking how he should reward himself. He thinks an orgasm tonight would be satisfactory, he hasn’t had one in a few days, even if he has to bring it on himself, it’s better than nothing.

-

That night Stiles has the best night sleep he’s had since moving to Wulfstan, if you don’t count passing out because you’re drunk out of your mind. He’s jerked off, taking his time because he has nowhere to be, nothing to rush to. His hand is wrapped loosely around his cock, tugging it a few times as he starts to push in a slicked up dildo in his ass, angling right to hit the perfect spot. It’s all a bit off because of his sprained wrist, but soon enough it starts feeling just right – that he doesn’t even care anymore.

He starts to fondle his balls, pushing the dildo in and out before starting to hit his prostate that makes his breath hitch. He wraps his hand back around his cock with a firmer grip and starts to tug harder, turning on the vibrator of the dildo – and that’s when he really, _really_ starts to feel good. It doesn’t take long before he’s arching off the bed, stroking himself through his orgasm as it splatters on his chest and he turns off the vibrator before he gets over-sensitive.

Needless to say he crashes for the night soon after in blissful sleep.

-

The following morning, Stiles strolls into work to see Laura walking down the helical staircase, and the first thing he thinks is “ _oh shit, I fucked something up,”_ but Laura smiles and says good morning.

“Remember when we were talking about certain days off each month?” she asks motioning for Stiles to follow her towards the small valley kitchen.

“Sure do.”

“Well, tomorrow is your lucky day, you have it off. Don’t go crazy.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Don’t go looking a gift horse in the mouth now,” Laura warns as she’s stirring the milk in her cup of tea.

“Got it,” Stiles calls out after Laura walks away heading back up the staircase to her office. Stiles doesn’t waste any time digging his cell phone out of his bag, and texts Scott asking if he wants to hang out tonight? It’s not like he has to be up early in the morning.

Throughout the day Stiles keeps checking his phone, pressing the little circular button to see if there are any missed text messages. Despite the fact that his cell phone is resting beside his mouse, the volume setting set to loud. He tells himself that he’s in the basement, that’s why he keeps checking his phone – there might not be enough signal.

By the end of his work day and Scott still hasn’t answer, Stiles just thinks it’s probably because Scott’s been busy at work. So Stiles decides to call it a day, head home, cook some dinner and hopefully by then he’ll have heard from Scott.

He doesn’t hear from Scott. It’s nearing 7:00 and he’s lapped his house a few times trying to entertain himself. When he remembers that Scott told him about the barn they’d passed on the way to the doctor’s office being a make shift gym. Stiles could really use a run, so he runs to his room changes into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, throws his jacket on and heads in the direction of the barn.

-

“Since tomorrow is the full moon,” Laura starts from where she stands at a podium, Derek standing to her side. It’s the same sort of conversation they have every month, but they have it none the less, “Boyd and Isaac have agreed to check the perimeter tomorrow before we get the all clear. Something a little different as you are all well aware, is the new resident in the village – please be advised and steer clear. If no one else has anything to stay, we’re adjourned for the night.”

Laura goes to bang the gavel on the podium; something she doesn’t really need to do but still does anyway, every month without fail.

“I have something,” Derek says clearing his throat, everyone sitting back down after they’d gotten up to leave for the night. Laura sighs, raises her eyebrow waiting for Derek to continue. “You all have seemed to skip right over the **new resident**. He shouldn’t be here, it’s dangerous and he doesn’t belong.”         

“We have humans in the village already,” Laura warns before Derek causes uproar in the middle of the barn.

“Then it’s not safe,” Derek reiterates.

“We haven’t had a problem in ages Derek. Besides he’s here to do a job, we’re paying him for it. That’s that.”

“That’s beside the point…” Derek doesn’t get to finish his sentence because everyone is shushing each other as they all turn around to see the barn door being slid open, revealing one Stiles Stilinski.

Derek tenses and he can feel Laura doing the same beside him, as Stiles takes in the group of people in the barn.

“Uh, I was… Did I interrupt something?” Stiles asks scrunching his nose up.

“Oh we’re just talking finances and all that boring stuff, a little tradition we have,” Laura lies – well in all fairness it’s not entirely a lie.

“I was just looking to work out,” Stiles hedges, “Scott told me this doubles as the gym?” and Stiles looks at where Scott is seated. Except Scott isn’t looking at Stiles, instead pretending to be interested in the grooves and etches of the wooden chair in front of him.

“We’re finished. You’re more than welcome to work out now,” Laura tells him.

“You know what, I’ll just head back home, I wasn’t really feeling it tonight anyway,” Stiles concedes turning on his heels. Not before everyone notices how utterly confused and questioning Stiles looks.

Derek doesn’t put it past Stiles, Laura raves about him being a computer genius and all that, he’s bound to start asking questions soon enough. And when he does he’ll either get himself into some serious trouble, or become a liability – neither a settling thought.

-

Stiles lasts all of one minute before his brain starts to go into over-drive wondering what the hell he just walked in on. Village meeting, his ass because whatever it was, it looked sketchy as fuck. Like why would Scott entirely avoid his gaze and act like Stiles didn’t exist. Okay, Stiles isn’t trying to be overly-dramatic over overly-clingy, but he likes Scott – he thought they were getting along. Whatever, maybe he’s on his man-period or something, because it’s totally a thing.

Needless to say, Stiles doesn’t get his workout that night but instead walks back to his house through the empty village, because apparently _they’re_ all invited to this meeting, and he’s not. Instead he un-wraps two packages of Jos Louis and eats them, throws in some more marshmallows and whatever else he can find without a single regret in the world.

Really, that’s a lie – because the next morning he wakes up with a jolt thinking he’s going to be late for work, when he remembers he was the day off. He’s got a sugar hangover and feels like complete shit. He’s not the healthiest of people in the world, he knows that but he usually knows better than to go overboard on the sugar intake.

Since Scott for all intents and purposes is AWOL and Stiles figures it’s unlikely there will be another village meeting in the barn this morning, he’ll get his workout on.

This time, when he walks into the barn he doesn’t see rows of seats filled with people whipping around in their chair to stare at him, with Mayor Laura and Derek staring at him from where they stand on the podium like _he’s_ the weird one. Instead, the chairs are all folded up and propped against one side of the barn with the few gym machines, yoga mats and other workout stuff set up around the barn.

Stiles does a few warm-ups before he’s popping in his iPod and starting on the treadmill, mindful of his injured hand. He doesn’t pay attention for how long he’s been running, or how many miles or calories he’s burned – he doesn’t care about that. He loves to be able to run, listen to music and forget what’s going on around him. He likes to run until his limbs are sore and he can’t go any further. Running on a treadmill is dreadfully boring; he’s starting at the same wall with a black and white poster of a woman standing en pointe, in a large fluffy tutu, a headpiece with her head tilted and her hands resting on her cheek – with the name Anna Pavlova on the bottom.

Now that Stiles finally takes in the room around him, he sees more posters mostly black and white with woman from different time periods dressed up in similar clothes – ballet clothes, or jazz clothes in different poses. Whoever owns or runs this barn/gym/meeting area clearly loves dance.

Only after so many songs pass by on Stiles iPod does his legs start to tire, the sweat running down his face does he stop the treadmill, hopping off and chugging his water. Despite the aches he feels and knows he’s definitely going to feel later, he feels much more relaxed than he did the night before; he reminds himself that he should keep up the running.

Back out in the village square, it’s just as deserted as the first night/day that Stiles had arrived in Wulfstan – ever since that first day he’s seen more and more people, but not today. He walks by Luke’s and sees the ‘open sign’ hanging on the door, Luke standing behind the counter, his back to the door. Stiles shrugs and enters.

“How’d I know you’d be in here?” Luke asks without even glancing up from whatever he’s doing, his back still to Stiles.

“Because I’m a fan of traditions?” Stiles hops up onto one of the bar stools and starts playing with the napkin dispenser.

“Coffee will be ready in a minute,” Luke says, ignoring whatever it was Stiles said.

Stiles can see that Luke is in fact making a new pot of coffee, dumping the grinds into the coffee filter and fitting it back into the coffee machine. Soon enough those wonderful, wonderful percolator noises that are like church bells to Stiles ears start echoing throughout the empty diner.

“Bad day for business?” Stiles starts, trying to make small talk – not that he thinks Luke will rise.

“Gets like this sometimes,” Luke shrugs, “I usually close up for the day.”

Luke’s hand grabs to napkin dispenser that Stiles is twirling around on the counter, and pushes it away from him, giving him a pointed look. Stiles takes the hint.

“Oh? Why didn’t you?”

“I will, later. What do you want?”

Considering Stiles had just worked out, he didn’t think ordering those delicious fluffy pancakes with whipped cream was a good idea – instead he opted for an omelette with wholemeal toast. Boring, yet somehow Luke _still_ manages to make it taste like he’s eating at a four-star restaurant, no better than that, like he’s in heaven.

“So what do you normally do when these days roll around, and everyone is off into the abyss?”

“Fishing, camping or both,” Luke answers as he wipes down the counter tops despite it being spotlessly clean.

“My dad used to fish, not very often he was always too busy working but he went as often as he could.”

“Did he ever teach you?”

“Nah,” Stiles snorts, “He said fishing was a time for quite-ness and tranquillity – taking me would scare off the fishes or something.”

Luke actually smiles, lets out a little laugh at that like he understands where Stiles’ dad is coming from. Stiles would _not_ scare off the fishes, rude.

Once Stiles is done, Luke is following him out the diner with his fishing gear. Luke locks up the diner and Stiles says his good bye. He starts to think that maybe Luke isn’t so bad after all.

Now that Stiles has crossed off working out and breakfast from his list, he doesn’t know what to do. He checks his watch and sees it’s only 11:30 – he’s still got the rest of the day, to do absolutely nothing. He doesn’t need any more groceries, so going to Doose’s isn’t necessary. He’s definitely not going to Le Chat Club, a novelty store that specialises in all things cats, from cat plates, to teacups to actually supplies for cats – he’s so not a cat person.

He walks by Kim’s Antiques and decides why not have a look, maybe he’ll find some things for his new place, it could use a little more décor and he doubts there’s an Ikea anywhere nearby. The minute he walks in and the bell rings, there’s an old Asian woman with a broom hovering by the door, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Who are you? Why you are?” the woman asks, sweeping her broom closer and closer to Stiles’ feet.

“The sign said open!” Stiles screeches shuffling back towards the door, “I wanted to look around for my new place. I’m Stiles.”

“This isn’t museum, you come to shop, no touching!” She exclaims and turns around heading off farther back into the store/house.

Stiles considers bolting the fuck out of there because he has no doubt that she has a large enough box to shove him into and ship him off to Korea or somewhere and no one would be none the wiser. But then he sees some stuff that catches his eye and he can’t resist going farther into the store.

He sees this nice brown leather arm chair that would be perfect in his bedroom for when he feels like reading. It even has a little ottoman for him to prop his feet up on, but it doesn’t have a price tag and he’s too scared to go find the scary old lady – Ms Kim.

Stiles continues walking when he sees a random doorknob sitting there, with a little tag and picks it up to inspect it, for no other reason than he’s bored.

“50 dollars,” Ms Kim says from behind Stiles.

Stiles yelps and sends the doorknob flying in the air, only barely managing to catch it again before it hits the ground, silently thanking whoever he needs to.

“50 dollars for a doorknob?”

“From the civil war,” Ms Kim says like that explains anything.

“As far as I’m concerned it should have stayed in that era,” Stiles says gently placing it right back where he found it, “How much is that chair over there?” he asks.

“150 dollars.”

“Let me guess, from the war of 1812?” Stiles jokes.

“Don’t be silly,” Ms Kim snaps, “From the forties, you want?”

“Can I put a down payment on it and come back and get it?”

“No, you want it you buy and take it now. We are not a storage place.”

“I can’t,” Stiles points out, raising his arms to show his bandaged wrist.

“Not my problem,” Ms Kim folds her arms over her chest, her eyes unwilling to waver, the same as her determination.

“Never mind,” Stiles sighs walking past Ms Kim and out the door.

He thinks maybe it will still be there when his arm is better, or he can borrow a truck or something to move it. How the hell does she think he’s going to carry a leather chair and an ottoman back to his house? How does she even get any business with that attitude – though it seems to be on par with every other establishment in Wulfstan.

Later that night, when Stiles is at home shuffling around furniture throughout the house to his liking, he swears he hears muffled howls, like a dog or a wolf – but he doesn’t have any neighbours nearby to have a dog in the backyard. He only hears it a few more times before he shakes his head saying he must be imaging things. It probably has something to do with the second bottle of beer he’s on.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it bad I'm starting to ship Stiles/Luke? Don't worry it's not going to turn into that! haha.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little view from Derek's perspective on the night of the full moon.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Isaac asks, referring to himself, Boyd and Erica, “We’re going to go get Scott.”

“I’m fine,” Derek mutters as he steps out of his house, shutting the front door not bothering to lock it – because who’s going to break in? Seriously?  

“Are you sure? You always come running with us,” Isaac replies with a confused look on his face.

“I’m fine,” Derek repeats with a slightly harsher tone.

Isaac rolls his eyes, gives Derek the middle finger and is running off in the direction of the forest, presumably to meet up with the rest of the group.

Derek heads in the opposite direction to where Isaac ran off to as he feels the bones in his body begin to shift turning into his beta form. He doesn’t know where Laura ran off to; she always spends the full moons on her own, or at least away from the immediate pack members. If only she knew where he was spending his night, she’d probably lock him up in the old basement cellar like he was a teenager on his first full moon. Except, they don’t go in the basement anymore, not since the fire, not since the stench of death and sorrow still lingers no matter the years that pass.

It doesn’t take him long before he’s standing outside of Stiles’ house, he knew he was going to end up here and didn’t even try and stop himself – though he should have. He stands on the outskirts of Stiles’ house and listens intently to the shuffling of movements inside the house.

He hears the crack of a beer bottle being opened, some random mutters Stiles says to himself and then the shuffling of furniture. It’s really not all that interesting; Derek doesn’t know what he was expecting though. It’s not like he spends his time on the outskirts of Stiles’ house – it’s his first time.

Derek didn’t find Stiles particularly interesting or good looking the first time he laid eyes on him at Gypsy’s. He didn’t notice the scatter of moles on Stiles’ face leading to who knows where else. He didn’t notice or care about those pale brown eyes that screamed innocence, but was probably anything but. He also didn’t notice the way he always opened and closed his mouth a few times like he really had to think before he spoke, or the way he always licks his lips as if he were deserted in the Sahara desert.             He only first started noticing these things the second time he met Stiles, at his and Laura’s house, when Stiles had shown up for dinner calling him Gypsy.

He _really_ started to notice these things though, when Stiles showed up at the bar that night with Scott. The way he tipped back his drinks, head thrown back as fully body laughs shook throughout his entire body, ringing throughout the bar – and that made Derek start to wonder if his body would react the same way when he reached orgasm.

Derek doesn’t remember what made him get up, walking through the crowded bar towards Stiles and buying him a drink. Blame it on the alcohol or maybe just blame it on the pheromones throughout the bar letting their drunken state and flirting clog up the room. The next thing he knew he was standing in front of Stiles, having a drink with him and the next minute he was wondering what it would be like to have those succulent lips wrapped around a certain part of his body, _any_ part of his body instead of on the glass.

He was almost positive that he wasn’t being subtle in the bar, that everyone else would be able to see his interest in Stiles as clear as day, but no one gave him too much grief; only a few pointed looks from Erica, Boyd and Scott, Isaac seemed uninterested. That’s why Derek secretly likes Isaac the most; they look out for each other without getting into each other’s business.

The only person Derek knows would be concerned and actually have an impact on Derek’s decision is Laura. Sure, he knows she wants him to be happy – but not with the new resident in the village, the one that’s out of the loop on just about everything, yet has the most access to all their biggest secrets and Stiles doesn’t even realise it. Not with the man that to her is disposable, and once Stiles has done his job, and if it is indeed done thoroughly she can get rid of, tell him to find another job only keeping him around if she needs him. He’s seen it happen with other coders over the years, he just didn’t have the same interest in those as he apparently does in Stiles.

Derek doesn’t know how long he’s been standing outside of Stiles’ house before he feels the itch right done to his core with the urge to run. He only ignores it a few more minutes before he turns on his heels, sniffs the air with his eyes closed sensing where the rest of the pack is – and runs towards them, howling as he goes, only momentarily remembering what Laura said about discretion.  

By the time he reaches the rest of the group, they’re scattered about running, but he doesn’t miss the way Laura turns to face him, her eyes glowing a dangerous red that normally doesn’t bother him – but now, now there’s a lingering threat, and he can guess _why_ but he doesn’t know exactly what that threat entails – before Laura turns her head and continues running. Derek ignores the eagerness he feels between his skin to appease Laura, assure her things aren’t as they seem, and veers off on a different path, still running with his pack while still staying a ways away from Laura.

Boyd slows his pace to keep up with Derek, punches at his arm and runs off again. Derek grabs a hold of the distraction, howls and takes after Boyd. Boyd may not know exactly what’s transpired between Derek and his sister, but on the full moon you can feel the reaction of everyone around you, heightened more so than any other day, and even more so when it’s your own pack. Boyd knows well enough to distract Derek with a chase, literally like throwing a bone to a dog. Soon enough Erica catches on, tackling Derek to the ground – caught off guard by trying to chase down Boyd.

Derek all but forgets about Laura and the threat behind her eyes and growls, and can only hope that Isaac has done enough to distract Laura on their run. What are packs for?

\--

It’s gone 2 in the morning, the pack done with their run, utterly exhausted and it’s the first time that Derek actually regrets the decision to live with his sister like he’s a child and not in his thirties.

“Want to crash at ours?” Boyd asks Derek, as they’re all brushing leaves, dirt and grime from their bodies.

Derek’s about to say no, he’s not going to hide from his sister, when Erica interrupts.

“We’re closer to our place than yours, and you look exhausted,” she adds on.

They are in fact, closer to Boyd and Erica’s place and in all fairness Derek does look exhausted, but if he really wanted to he could make the short journey home to his house. But Erica and Boyd are giving him an out, an excuse to crash at theirs without having to ask. Derek nods his head and follows Erica and Boyd back to their house, hoping Laura isn’t staying up waiting for him to come home. He reminds himself, once again, that he’s not a child and he doesn’t need to inform Laura of what nights he’ll be home.

By the time they’re back to the house, they go to their respective rooms, Erica and Boyd to the master and Derek to the guestroom. He doesn’t even bother showering, falling into bed and drifting off to sleep before his head has hit the pillow. They’ll worry about laundry and dirt-covered sheets in the morning, like they always do.

Derek was content to sleep the day away, daily chores and work be damned but the smell of bacon and eggs wafted up the stairs, straight to his room and he found himself opening his eyes to peek around the room. He momentarily forgot where he is, and wonders why something smells so delicious. Laura rarely made breakfast, always running off to the town hall, caught up in her work and duties. Then, he remembers where he spent the night.

The room is still pitch black, no sunlight filtering in through the curtains, and the green flashing analogue clock on the bedside table reads 6:30 am. Boyd has to be at work soon, unlike Derek, Boyd doesn’t want to sleep the day away, or probably wouldn’t dare to dream about sleeping the day away, not when he works directly with Laura. Which means Erica is probably awake and getting ready to head to the school.

Derek reluctantly gets out of bed, his feet only hitting the floor because the lure of food. He puts his boxers on, not that Boyd or Erica would really care, but before and after the full moon he prefers to live like a human and not an animal.

“Your tea,” Erica signals, waving a Disney Grumpy mug at Derek. Derek loves the smell of coffee grounds or freshly brewed coffee, but the taste – not so much. It’s bitter going down, and leaves an after taste that he can’t chase away, even hours later. He remembers his dad used to drink coffee like it was a sport, he even begged his dad when he was around 10 to try some, his mom said no. That didn’t stop his dad from pouring some in a little cup and giving it to Derek. He couldn’t even down half of it before he was spitting it up. Talia Hale reappeared minutes later clucking her tongue saying “I told you so.”

So Derek prefers tea once in a while although he tries to avoid caffeine at all costs, but after a long night, or when he’s in the need of a pick me up, he drinks it.  

“Thanks,” Derek mutters sitting down at the breakfast table. A few minutes later Erica is pushing a plate full of eggs, brown toast and bacon in front of Derek. For all her past bitchiness when she was younger, Erica has definitely settled down. He remembers hearing about how she used to act out, cries for attention for whatever reason. Most put it down to Erica getting older and maturing as to why she’s not the way she used to be. Derek puts it down to Boyd. He’s settled her down without even realising or actively trying. Having someone that loves you unconditionally, someone to vent your anger out to who won’t judge you and yes even someone to have sex with, sex that isn’t a one night stand or casual it really helps change a person.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about last night,” Erica says as she and Boyd take their place at the kitchen table. It’s not a question, but a statement.

Derek’s answer is to shove a mouthful of eggs and a bite of toast in his mouth.

“How long?” Erica continues.

“Since the bar,” Derek shrugs the sooner they start this conversation, the sooner it can end.

“Is Laura the problem or are you using that as a cover up for Stiles being the problem?”

“Both, he doesn’t seem interested and you know full well Laura wouldn’t want me getting involved even _if_ Stiles wanted to. He’s ‘disposable,’” and Derek scrunches his face as if in agony at the words Laura always repeats. She’s hired and fired a number of coders once they’ve done their job, so that they don’t get too used to the system, get bribed and blab all of the village secrets. If it weren’t such a taxing and complicating job, she would do it herself or get someone to do it from Wulfstan.

“Is that how you see him, like the rest of the guys who were coders?” And there goes Erica the therapist; she is the school’s guidance counsellor after all.

“Obviously not,” Derek rolls his eyes.

“Then, she’s your sister Derek. **Talk**.”

“How much do you get paid a year again for that kind of advice?” Derek deflects, “Not that it matters, it doesn’t seem like Stiles is interested does it?”

“Aww poor Derek a little butt hurt someone hasn’t fallen for his charm?” Erica smirks grabbing the plates off of the table and dumping them in the sink.

Boyd, who’d been quietly observing the conversation unfold in front of him let out a snort of a laugh, trying to cover it up by drinking from his already empty coffee cup. Derek gives him a dirty look, but then a little smile takes over before saying his thanks and he better get going.

By the time he got home Laura was already gone, having left for work. He doesn’t know whether he was relieved or not though – eventually he’d have to face her. They do live under the same roof after all.

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To tide us over until the new episode on Monday! :)

Stiles still doesn’t know what was up with his random day off from work, but like Laura said don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. So he didn’t. He did however wonder about the lack of people in town, other than Luke and Ms Kim. Once again, he puts it down to this quirky village.

While Stiles is at work, just about to head for his lunch break his phone is ringing, it’s Scott. Stiles decides to answer even though he was acting weird that night at the village meeting, or whatever it was they called it.

“Hey man,” Scott hedges into the phone. “I wanted to apologise about the other night, and when I didn’t answer your texts.”

“I figured you were with this girlfriend of yours, which okay cool, but not at some secretive village meeting in which the newbie cannot attend.”

“I would have texted you back if I was with Allison!” Scott protested, “Unless we were, you know? Bro’s before ho’s, except don’t tell her I said that, she’ll kick me in the balls.”

Stiles can’t help but laugh, but then remembers that Scott isn’t off the hook just yet. “So bro’s before ho’s but super-secret elite meetings before bro’s?”

“I promise next time I won’t leave you hanging. Luke’s tonight for dinner? I’m paying.”

“Deal, I’m feeling particularly hungry today.”

-

Scott is soon off the hook, after he bought Stiles dinner _and_ the best apple pie he’s ever tasted in his life. Stiles is starting to think he has a _major_ crush on Luke, this man can fucking cook and bake like the best of them. Watch out Rachel Ray, Luke Danes is coming to a television network near you. Except, no he can’t actually picture Luke in front of the camera, but still.

He soon forgets about the weird village meeting, because everyone is back to being his friend again, more talkative and everything. Except he still avoids Ms Kim’s Antique Shop like it’s the plague, because she seriously scares him.

-

Before Stiles realises it, it’s December 1st and the town has magically transformed overnight. He wakes up one morning, ready to walk into work when he sees string lights hung up on all the buildings, wrapped around lamp posts and even on the gazebo in the middle of the village. It’s still dark enough this early in the morning on his walk to work, that the lights are still on, some a solid colour, some flashing, some green and red, others plain.

There’s even a sled and pretend Santa with his reindeers on the top of Great Wolfs Lodge. The only place that isn’t decorated is Luke’s Diner. Not a single string of light up, no pretend Santa or elves, no tinsel, candy canes or stars. Bah Humbug.

Stiles doesn’t dwell on that long enough though, because the only thing going through his head is how the hell did all these decorations appear over night? Stiles never does find out though. It remains a mystery.

With Christmas nearing everything seems to be turning out just right, more and more people seem happier, talkative and friendly. There are decorations at every corner, the smell of hot chocolate, eggnog and gingerbread being baked; there are even candy canes in almost every shop (except of course, for Luke’s).

Tables are being pushed together in Luke’s so that everyone can sit together. One evening when Stiles walks in, he’s being called over and sandwiched in between Dean and his girlfriend, who Stiles recognises from working at the book store, Rory. Beside Rory is Lane, who Stiles learns is Ms Kim’s daughter, when Stiles tells Lane that he met her mother, Lane automatically apologises for whatever her mother had done. Stiles laughs and realises he automatically likes Lane – plus after talking for a little while, he finds out they have similar taste in music.

Scott is sitting across from Stiles, Isaac beside him, with Boyd, Erica and even Derek scattered around the jumbled together tables. Everyone is talking loudly and ordering food. Luke looks like he’s about to have an aneurism.

“Why aren’t there any decorations in here or outside the diner?” Stiles finally gives in, asking. There’s a collective groan from around the table, and he’s pretty sure he can hear Derek snort.

“We’re not some sort of side show,” Luke grunts, “We don’t need to decorate for every damn holiday, and declare certain day’s snowmen day or hold a festival for lights, or pumpkins or do Easter egg hunts. This village is mad!”

Stiles is pretty sure that Luke was about to go on another ten minute rant, but a woman from somewhere else in the diner says “aw sweetie, come here,” and makes pinching motions with her fingers like she just wants to gobble Luke up, and with that he’s dashing behind the counter again, pretending to busy himself.

“Never, ever, ever get Luke started on village traditions and holidays. Not unless you want to be banished from the diner, or endure a rant like one you’ve never seen,” Dean advises Stiles as he takes a bite of pie.

“But it _is_ fun to wind Luke up every once in a while, he needs to blow some steam,” Rory giggles, snatching up the last bit of pie from Dean’s plate.

“Huh, kind of reminds me of you Gypsy,” Stiles jokes looking to where Derek is sitting polishing off a burger.

“You haven’t seen him at the annual spring carnival, he’ll knock a person over to get to the funnel cake,” Isaac laughed.

“Oooh, Mr Doom and Gloom has a sweet tooth huh?”

“What is it with you and nicknames?” Derek sighs.

“You’re right, sorry. I’m sticking to Gypsy.”

Derek sighs again, because nothing he says will ever get him to stop Stiles from calling him Gypsy. Well there is the threat of violence, but there are too many people here that Derek knows for a fact would jump to Stiles’ defence rather than Derek’s. Stiles was a little shit that no one could help but love.

-

It’s a Friday evening a week later, Stiles has just finished work and decides to pick up a few groceries for the week. Before he heads to Doose’s Market, he goes to the doctor’s office to see Melissa McCall about his injured wrist. As she’s looking over his wrist, Scott strolls in – while his mother gives him an exasperated look – and asks if Stiles has any plans tomorrow night. Stiles says he doesn’t. Scott says everyone is going to go to House of Wolf (surprise, surprise there). Except Stiles actually likes it there, so he doesn’t mind.

Melissa tells him that his wrist is almost all better; he doesn’t have to wear the brace anymore. Stiles almost practically kisses Melissa on the cheek because he’s so grateful. No more awkward trying to shower with the brace, or trying to type at work and most definitely no more awkward jerk off sessions. He has free reign of his hand and he intends to take absolute, full advantage of it.

Once Stiles is done at the doctor’s office he heads to the supermarket. Taylor Doose is behind the checkout, scanning and bagging someone’s groceries, deep in conversation that he hardly pays any attention to Stiles when he walks in, or he’s purposefully ignoring Stiles. Not that Stiles cares either way. He grabs a basket and starts his walk up and down the aisles trying to figure out what he wants.

Stiles is pretty engrossed in looking at the nutritional content of a pack of frozen chocolate chip waffles when he sees out of the corner of his eye, a guy walking around a corner and down one of the aisles. He also notices $20 on the ground.

“Hey, excuse me, excuse me!” Stiles calls, bending down to pick up the $20 chasing the guy down the aisle. “I think you dropped this.”

The man turns around looking at Stiles, and pats his pocket where the note must have fallen out. “Thanks. Most people would have just kept it!” The guy says, smiling as he takes the $20 note back.

Stiles has gotten to know most of the people around here, but he’s never seen this guy before. He wonders if he’s new, or just a resident that hasn’t been out and about much, more Boo Radley-esque.

“Well, had I not seen the money fall from your pocket, and it was just lying on the ground then it’s fair game. But I don’t need any karma coming back to bite me in the ass,” Stiles points out.

The man laughs says fair enough, and introduces himself as Ian and says he’s new in town.

Stiles instantly brightens up, glad to see that he’s no longer the newbie in town it’s almost a relief. Stiles tells Ian as much as Ian laughs.

“Well, since I don’t know anyone here, besides you, anywhere good to eat?”

“Luke’s Diner,” Stiles nods, “Just make sure to order quickly. Short and to the point, that’s how Luke likes it.”

“If you’re not busy why not join me?” Ian asks, continuing before Stiles can answer, “Besides, you gave me back my $20, the least I could do is buy you a coffee or something.”

Stiles finally agrees, because the temptation of Luke’s coffee is too appealing, it’s almost like a drug, more so than any other coffee he’s drank in his life. Besides, being nice to the new person in town wouldn’t be any harm, after all Stiles knows how long it takes the people of Wulfstan to warm up. So, he drops his groceries back where he found them, saying he can finish his shopping later. He doesn’t miss the way Taylor gives him a dirty look on his way out, because he didn’t put everything back where it was supposed to go.

-

In a village as small as Wulfstan, it’s not hard to tell when a new person enters the perimeter. It’s even easier to tell when the new person that enters isn’t a human but a werewolf – and one just recently entered.

Derek sensed it almost immediately. He was at Gypsy’s; going over the inventory of all the spare parts they had left over when he caught a whiff. It wasn’t unusual for a stray werewolf to enter Wulfstan; it’s just not something that happens on a regular basis. With that being said, they almost have to immediately get checked out, make sure they don’t pose a threat.

Derek knew he had to tell Laura, thankfully they were back to talking. She never said a word about what happened on the night of the full moon and he doesn’t know why. Laura is absolutely not the kind of person to ignore a problem until it goes away, instead she goes at it head on – why she was keeping her mouth shut about Derek and his interest in Stiles was beyond him. But Derek wasn’t going to question it.

 He knew by the time he got to the Town Hall, which wouldn’t take long, that someone would probably have already told Laura about the new visitor, but he figured he might as well make the effort. Only, his journey to Town Hall took him right past Luke’s Diner, where he happened to catch a whiff again of said visitor, who was currently at a table laughing and talking to Stiles. Stiles, who was laughing in return, a grin across his face looking utterly relaxed.

Derek doesn’t know why, but he bristles at seeing the two of them together and puts it down to Stiles could be in danger. This guy hasn’t been vetted, he could be a rogue werewolf and about to harm a human being, a human being that has no idea he lives in a village full of werewolves and a human who is completely at the mercy of this new visitor.

He quickens his pace to the Town Hall, but instead of taking the staircase up to Laura’s office like he initially intended to, he takes the stairs down to the basement, typing in a code that gives him access to Stiles’ giant office and accidently spills some water on a circuit board. The circuit board starts to sizzle, a little flame igniting before it’s doused out and the computer screens go black. He only hopes he didn’t fry the whole system, just enough to call Stiles away from his ‘date’.

-

“So, what are you even doing here?” Ian asks, “You don’t seem like the … Type to be in Wulfstan, no offence.”

“None taken,” Stiles laughs, “No I’m not originally from here as you guessed, I work here though.”

Stiles likes Ian so far, he’s been nothing but nice and talkative. They’ve ordered their food, talked a little about what there is to do in Wulfstan. Stiles laughed saying he could hardly be the tour guide, considering he’s only been here about a month or so.  When Stiles asks why Ian is even considering moving here, Ian falters a little before answering that he thinks it would be a good fit for him. Stiles has no idea what that even means, but nods his head like he understands, gulping his delicious coffee.

There’s not many people in the diner, just Kirk who is sitting by himself finishing off a bagel and muttering to himself something about his receipt bill not being right, Luke is overcharging him. Luke, of course is in the diner as well, and Stiles notices that he’s paying extra attention to Stiles and his new companion. Luke’s eyes track every movement Ian makes, watches as Stiles moves and talks – Stiles puts it down to Luke not liking new people. He’s only now barely gotten used to Stiles himself, let alone _another_ new person. Even as Luke picks up the phone to call someone, Stiles still sees him staring. Strange.

 Stiles’ phone buzzes on the table and he apologises saying he has to get it when he sees the caller ID come up and it’s Laura. Ian says no problem and picks up his own phone starting to scroll through it to give Stiles some privacy.

“Hello?”

“Stiles, there’s an emergency at the Town Hall, a system has fried or something I need you to get here immediately!” Laura half shouts into the phone.

“Oh, umm okay?” Stiles says looking at his watch, it’s almost 8 PM on a Friday, and he remembers Laura saying she’d only ever call him in late if there was an emergency and he supposes this is considered an emergency. “Be there in a sec.”

Stiles hangs up and frowns at his phone. “I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go Ian, an emergency came up at work.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ian shrugs, smiling, “Can I get your –”

“Stiles! I need your help at the Great Wolf Lodge,” Isaac yells barging in through the diner letting the door rattle as it shuts, cutting off whatever Ian was going to say.

“What?” Stiles asks in complete confusion, “What could you possibly need my help for?”

“My computer won’t turn on.”

“What?” Stiles asks again this time shaking his head – what the actual fuck is even going on. “Laura just called me, said there’s an emergency. You’ll have to survive without your computer for a little while longer.”

“Oh, she called?” Isaac says looking relieved, “Well then I’ll walk you. My computer probably just needs a good smack. Come on.” Isaac walks around to where Stiles is sitting and all but grabs him and shoves him out the door. He doesn’t even get a chance to say bye or thanks to Ian.

Once Isaac has so graciously seen that Stiles has made it to the basement he disappears again but Stiles doesn’t have much time to think about what the hell is going on, soon being distracted by the fried circuit board.

Thankfully, the main server hasn’t been fried, only a small portion that should be easy to recover within a few hours. At least it’s not going to be an all-nighter he thinks, and at least he didn’t have any plans. He would hate to miss out on a good night at House of Wolf.

“What happened?”

Stiles startles from where he’s leaning over the circuit board trying to unplug it without electrocuting himself, or worse yet frying the whole system – because he’s pretty sure Laura is more concerned with all the encryptions rather than Stiles’ own well-being.

“Dude! Heart attack, not to mention potentially frying everything,” Stiles screeches, clutching his chest, looking at where Derek’s standing in the doorway.

“Well?”

“I don’t know man; everything was fine when I left it this evening after work. Now all of a sudden it’s fried. God Laura is going to kill me if she thinks I left a drink down here or something.”

“I’m sure she won’t.”

“You’re her brother Gypsy, if you fucked up she’d probably forgive you because you’re family. Me? Not so much.”

“Can you fix it at least?”

Stiles nods his head and doesn’t see when Derek lets out a sigh of relief – because Derek would have been the one in trouble if Laura found out he intentionally fried the system to get Stiles away from this new, potentially dangerous visitor.

-

Mere seconds after Stiles was being shoved out the door by Isaac was Boyd bursting in to Luke’s diner and escorting Ian to the Town Hall. Ian thankfully didn’t put up a fight and agreed to follow Boyd; he did after all intend to see the Mayor.

Boyd didn’t make any small talk with Ian, but stayed close to him as they walked to the Town Hall, leading him up the stairs to Laura’s office. He opened the door, allowing Ian to enter first, Boyd followed in after. Sitting behind the desk in her chair was Laura, two other people in the room as well. There’s Billy, a large burly man with a beard and beer belly who works in construction - and looks like he could snap a person with his pinkie finger and Charles, an elderly man who is in the know of everything that goes on in the Village, and Village history.

Laura tells Ian to have a seat and gets right down to business, asks what he’s doing here. She had expected Derek to be in the room, he was after all family and would be the next Mayor should anything ever God forbid happened to her – yet he was nowhere to be found.

Ian puts his hands up in defence and says he comes in peace. He’s an Omega who’s grown tired of being on his own, wandering from state to state. He’s come into contact with too many other werewolf packs that either want him to join, and use him to their advantage – which would be to his disadvantage, want to kill him or worse yet come into contact with hunters who wanted to kill him, slowly using any torture technique they could think of.

Laura sits and silently listens, the rest of the room deafening quiet. They’re all paying attention to his heartbeat, it’s not impossible for another werewolf to lie but with the help of four werewolves all listening to one werewolves heart, they had the advantage.

When Laura had heard a loud banging sound, sending Boyd running to see what it was, coming back and telling her it was the system being fried, in addition to there being a new werewolf in town (thanks to Luke who called from the diner) Laura had thought the two went hand-in-hand. Laura had thought another pack, even just a lone werewolf had come to attack Wulfstan for whatever reason, and she intended to get to the bottom of it.

Except, listening to Ian tell his story without a blip in his heartbeat, no spike in his emotion or body language, she deemed him to be telling the truth. He genuinely wanted to stop being a wanderer, philandering from state to state and running into trouble at every turn he takes.

Ian had went on about how he heard of this pack living in Wulfstan that years ago used to welcome omegas, provide them shelter, a pack, someone to care for them and them to care for. He said he decided to set out across the country to get here, to see if they would accept him, it was worth a shot. Even though it had taken him longer than expected to get here since it wasn’t exactly the easiest place to find.

It is true, Wulfstan years ago when Laura’s dad was the Mayor, and even his predecessor used to welcome omegas and other werewolves looking for a pack and shelter. Wulfstan had become something of a safe haven for lone werewolves, more so in the past than now in the future – but the story was still around, apparently.

Laura was hesitant at first about allowing Ian to stay, although she can hear her father’s words in her head telling her to let him stay, back then the dangers were more limited, their numbers were stronger and they hardly had to worry about hunters, only other packs. Except now, now things were different and Laura had to be vigilante in keeping her village safe, she couldn’t show weakness not in front of hunters and most definitely not in the face of other werewolf packs.  

But, she knew what was right, was right and she told Ian he was allowed to stay, but he was on probation and the village would be watching him like a, well no not a hawk, like a werewolf. Boyd quickly whispers something into her ear before she speaks again.

“Oh and another thing, stay away from Stiles. He’s important to this village and not to get distracted.”

Even though Derek was in the building, he couldn’t hear through the cement walls, not all the way down in the basement, so he didn’t hear when Laura had welcomed Ian to Wulfstan. He wouldn’t be impressed in the least (except maybe for the stay away from Stiles thing, but that seemed to be a general statement to anyone _too_ interested in him).

Laura was also not impressed in the least that her brother was a no-show.

-

It’s almost ten PM and Stiles is still seated in his office chair, going through files making sure everything is still there and secure. Derek had been there for the most of the time, even helping if only limited by handing Stiles something when he needed it, or helping him disconnect the server so that it didn’t affect the rest of the system. Now though, Derek was nowhere in sight. Stiles didn’t blame him though, Stiles has been sitting there for the past half hour, staring at the computer screen muttering to himself and ignoring a silent Derek who was seated in another chair flipping through some old files.

“Here, don’t spill it,” Derek said frightening Stiles for the second time that night. He handed Stiles a paper cup filled to the brim with coffee – from Luke’s.

“Isn’t Luke’s closed?” Stiles asked blinking up at Derek his eyes adjusting to an actual face and not a computer screen.

“It helps to know the owner,” Derek rolls his eyes.

“The owner knows _me_ and he certainly wouldn’t open up just for me.”

“You want it or not?” Derek asks gruffly.

“Want,” Stiles takes the cup and takes a sip. He lets out a filthy groan of pleasure and takes another sip. “Thanks Gypsy,” Stiles beams. He’s about to set the cup down on the table but then second guesses it, not trusting himself not to spill it and most certainly fuck up the whole system.

Derek extends his hand and takes the cup from Stiles. He holds it in his hand, sitting down in a chair and propping his feet up on the table beside Stiles. Stiles own personal cup holder, how cute. Then, Derek takes a sip of Stiles’ coffee and Stiles nearly has a heart attack, because _no one_ touches his precious coffee. Derek doesn’t even like the taste of coffee, but can’t resist taking a sip, trying to chase the flavour of coffee mixed with Stiles, however faint it may be. He raises his eyebrow like he dares Stiles to say something – Derek did buy the coffee, didn’t he?

“Cooties man, cooties,” but Stiles is laughing and directs his gaze back to the computer screen, cracking down on his work.

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles sees Ian around town, sometimes at Luke’s or just walking somewhere but other than a wave and Stiles trying to say hi, Ian avoids him at all costs – and he honestly has no idea why. He thinks it may have to do with running out on him at Luke’s Diner saying something had gone awry at work – wasn’t that the excuse to try and get away from a date? That or something happened to a family member. It wasn’t like they were even on a date, were they?

Oh my God Stiles thinks, what if they _were_ on a date and he bolted out of there and now Ian thinks he’s not interested? In all honestly, Stiles didn’t think it even was a date, didn’t think Ian saw him like that or if he was even interested in men, but now Stiles has fucked it up either way. At the least they could have been friends, but not anymore. Way to go, Stilinski.

“Honestly, don’t even sweat it man,” Scott reassures Stiles. They’re currently in Scott’s mom’s house, helping prepare dinner after she badgered Scott into inviting Stiles over for dinner, Stiles was more than happy to accept.

“I mean even if he’s not gay, he could have been a friend and I was a total dick wad.”

“But I’m your friend,” and Scott looks genuinely hurt his dark brown eyes blinking rapidly at Stiles and Stiles bursts out laughing.

“Yeah man, you are my friend,” he claps Scott on the back sending a potato skin flying across the kitchen. “But if he was a potential hook up, I could have gotten laid – no offence but I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“I really wish I hadn’t heard that,” Melissa says coming back into the kitchen, freshly changed out of her work uniform.

“Oh hey Melissa,” Stiles says turning bright red, “No need to worry, I’m not your future son in law or anything.”

“As far as family goes, you wouldn’t be so bad,” Melissa says pinching Stiles’ cheek and shooing the boys out of the kitchen. She told them she would finish dinner and they could go relax.

They make their way up to Scott’s childhood bedroom, which he says is the exact same since he moved out, Melissa won’t change a thing about it. Stiles thinks that’s kind of cute, because his dad did the same thing when Stiles went to university and moved out. Stiles joked about his dad turning it into a gym or a crafts room, but his dad had the whole house to himself already, he didn’t need another room.

Scott tells him that most of the video games are at his own place now, the only thing he has hooked up to the TV is the old school Nintendo Entertainment System, the grey one with the controllers attached to the console – and does that ever bring back memories. Stiles remembers getting one for Christmas one year, and he almost had a panic attack by how excited he was.

They settle down cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV since the controller won’t let them move much farther, blowing at the bottom of the game cartridge before popping it in the system and loading Super Mario Bros. Soon enough they’re entranced in the wonderful Mushroom Kingdom on a search to save Princess Toadstool.

“I use to pretend Princess Toadstool was my mom, she of course didn’t have such a horrendous name,” Stiles says offhand as he jumps on a Koopa Troopa watching the shell slide away.

“Really?” Scott asks sneaking a look at Stiles then returning his focus to the game.

“Yeah, I used to pretend that if I could get there in time, kill Bowser and rescue Princess Toadstool than my mom would be rescued too, no more cancer. Silly, I know but I was a kid.”

“It’s not silly,” Scott nudges his shoulder against Stiles. It seems more than just reassurance though, more than sympathy, more like empathy – like he knows just what Stiles is talking about, even if he won’t mention it.

Stiles and Scott are so entranced with the game, years of experience allowing them to level up quickly, Scott telling Stiles where to jump to get the extra life and Stiles yelling back he already knew that – that they don’t even hear when Melissa calls from downstairs saying dinners ready. She’s eventually standing in the doorway, leaning on the door frame her arms folded across her chest, trying to get the boys attention.

“Just a minute mom,” Scott whines looking up at his mom from the floor his eyes wide.

“Don’t make me turn off the TV like when you were 10.”

“LOOK! LOOK! We’re almost done,” Scott protests pointing to the TV where Mario is currently running dead on in the direction of Bowser.

Melissa sighs sits down on the edge of the bed and watches as her 26 year old son gets on his knees almost crawling so his face is smushed against the TV.

“Be careful Stiles, careful!” he warns.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles chants managing to get under Bowser sliding to the end, breaking the bridge so that Bowser is falling into the lava.

“YES!” they both scream, flinging the controller aside to fist pump each other. Princess Toadstool is rescued.

“Boys,” Melissa sighs getting up from the bed ruffling Scott’s hair, “c’mon dinners ready and getting cold.”

Dinner is a cheerful affair they talk about everything and nothing at all, not spending too much time on one topic or getting into any serious conversations. The food is delicious, chicken pot pie and it sure as hell beats a frozen TV dinner.

Stiles couldn’t help but snoop around the house as inconspicuously as he could because let’s be honest who doesn’t? He’s proud to say he at least hasn’t snooped through the bathroom cabinet – only because he hasn’t used the bathroom yet. Stiles does notice that there’s tons of pictures around the house, some lining the wall going up the stairs, what really peeks his interest though is that they’re only of Melissa and Scott – no father or other paternal figure.

Stiles’ dad kept all the pictures of Stiles’ mom after she passed away, he didn’t take or move them from where they were perched around the house. It hurt to look at them of course, but it would hurt more not to see her beautiful face making a presence in the house – instead packed away in the attic in a box. Which led Stiles to believe that maybe Scott’s dad wasn’t dead but just not around, and that’s why there were no pictures around.

For all that Stiles loves to hear himself talk, constantly opening his mouth to speak before he thinks, he keeps his mouth shut about that one question itching to burst right out – because he knows. He knows what it’s like to have people ask about his mother and where she is (and now his father), and how it absolutely sucks having to tell the same story over and over like a broken record on repeat. Even more annoying is to have people say “oh I’m so sorry,” even though that’s the only thing there really _is_ to say – Stiles would just prefer people didn’t ask and that’s why he doesn’t ask Scott. Plus, it might upset Melissa and she’s been too sweet to Stiles like a doting mother figure that he couldn’t imagine seeing a sad, put out look on her otherwise striking face.

Melissa sends Stiles home with a Tupperware container full of leftover chicken pot pie and another container filled with a chocolate mousse cake, Stiles saying his thanks and he’s glad he has another meal lined up that won’t be a frozen dinner or from Luke’s (though he could live off of Luke’s food, hell he could live off of only Luke’s coffee).

-

He’s coming home from work one night to see a white envelope sticking out of his mailbox when he realises that this is his first piece of mail ever, since moving here. He wonders who would have sent it because he hasn’t told anyone outside of Wulfstan his new address, just hasn’t gotten around to it – which means it has to be from someone living here. Why couldn’t they just hand it to him or drop it off themselves instead of paying the postage? There’s a little stamp in the top corner, a little wolf with the words Wulfstan at the bottom. Stiles rolls his eyes but hurries inside and shuts the door stopping the cold, snowy air get into the confines of his nicely heated house.

He plops down on one of the kitchen chairs, flailing as he almost falls over because the chair legs aren’t even, which reminds him he really needs to get some new furniture ( _not_ from Ms Kim). Stiles slides his thumb under the envelope slicing it open to reveal a crisp white card with silver etched writing on the front reading:

_“You’re Invited”_

On the front with snowflake and Christmas trees surrounding it. He flips open the card as silver and gold confetti falls into his lap some trickling on to the ground along with a folded piece of paper – and he swears under his breath because he’s going to have to clean that up later, who even _does_ that anymore?

The inside of the card reads:

_The Annual Christmas Dinner at Great Wolf Lodge_

_Where: Great Wolf Lodge_

_Time: 7 pm_

_Followed by drinks & festivities!_

There’s another little card inside attached to the large card that reads RSVP with two boxes, a yes and a no with a little line at the bottom asking how many? Stiles gathers he’s supposed to fill it out and send it back in the mail. This is some fancy pants stuff he thinks.

He grabs the folded piece of paper that fell into his lap along with the confetti unfolds and reads it.

_Stiles, I hope you can make it to the annual Christmas Dinner. It’s not to be missed! Also if you don’t have any plans for Christmas morning I’d like to invite you over to my house, we don’t do much. Just open presents, drink some eggnog and put a movie on. Derek and I would be pleased to have you, so say yes because I’m your boss and what I say goes._

_-         Laura_

Stiles snorts as he rereads Laura’s letter because how is he even supposed to say no when she uses the boss card? Plus now that Stiles thinks about it, he’s been so wrapped up in the pretty lights and decorations showcased throughout the village that he hasn’t actually even given much thought to what he was actually going to do on Christmas Day. The more that he thinks about it, the more depressing it would be to actually spend the day alone cooped up in his own house without even a Christmas tree up. Plus it’s too late to make any plans back in Beacon Hills, not that he wants to crash any of his friends’ plans.

 There was also a flyer that wasn’t in the envelope but came with the mail, he unfolds it and sees an advertisement for a “Snowman Day,” in a few days’ time. It’s a snowman competition, pick your teams meet in the village square and build your snowmen, which will then be judged by Laura, Taylor and Ms Patty, who is the one that owns the barn that doubles as a gym and meeting place.

So Luke _wasn’t_ kidding when he went on his rant about the village not needing silly traditions and days declared snowmen day, this village really was quirky. But Stiles has to admit that he’s more than a little excited at the idea considering he’s never actually built a snowman, not a proper one anyway. There was never enough snow in Beacon Hills and on the off chance that there was, it would be half melted by the time night rolled around. Here though, in Wulfstan the snow seemed to stick and not disappear however much Stiles wished it would.

He pulled out his cell, texted Scott asking if he’d be his partner for the contest. Scott texted back a few minutes later “fuck yeah we’ll cream all those suckers.” Stiles was looking forward to it. Which reminded him, he rummaged through his junk drawer in the kitchen and fished out a pen, checking off the ‘yes’ box for the dinner at Great Wolf Lodge, and wrote down that it was just him attending. He’d tell Laura tomorrow that he’d be there on Christmas morning.

-

Stiles is bundled in his newly bought jacket, scarf, boots and gloves that he bought from the village’s camping and outdoor store – his previous winter jacket wasn’t cutting it, even his short walk to work and back left him shivering cold, long after he’d made it inside with a warm cup of coffee. He has an extra scarf and a top hat with him in a plastic shopping bag.

“You ready to kick ass or what?” Scott asks clapping his hands together once in excitement. He’s dressed in a pair of boots, jeans and a light sweater with no gloves.

“How the hell are you even alive right now and not frozen in place?” Stiles asks in amazement, “and I’m not doing all the heavy lifting man, so you might want to get a pair of gloves or something.”

“I’ll be fine,” Scott shrugs.

Most of Wulfstan, children and adults alike are currently located in the village square, all standing in their own little section hoarding their snow and side eying anyone who might try and steal their allotment of snow. Laura is standing on the gazebo, a microphone being set up as she prepares to speak.

“As you all know,” she begins clearing her throat, “it’s annual Snowman Day, you have an hour and a half to build and complete your snowman with no outside help other than who’s on your team. The buzzer will ring when time is up and then myself, Taylor and Ms Patty will judge who earns their bragging rights and their free meal at the annual Christmas Dinner at Great Wolf Lodge.”

Laura holds up a horn, presses the button and everyone dives into their snow ready to build the village’s best snowman they’ve ever seen.

Everyone is paired off in their own little groups, Erica and Boyd are predictably working together giggling as they roll their snow trying to form a ball as the base of the snowman and end up rolling around in the snow together laughing and kissing – paying less and less attention to their task at hand. Rory and Dean are off and building their snowman while Lane is working with a guy that Stiles can’t remember the name off. Kirk is working with newest village resident Ian.

Isaac and Derek are working together and Stiles can already hear Derek yelling at Isaac, as they fumble to form the base of the snowmen, falling into the snow and squishing the round ball and having to start again. Though Isaac doesn’t take any shit from Derek, yelling right back at him, pushing him out of the way and rolling the ball on his own. Other children are laughing and building their own as their parents cheer them on. Luke is unsurprisingly nowhere to be seen, actually if you look in the direction of the diner and through the window you can see his figure standing staring out at all the residents rolling around in the snow, his hand up in the air waving around undoubtedly swearing about this crazy village he lives in.

“It’s looking good so far,” Stiles beams as they gently lift the head of the snowman to place it on the rest of his body. His cheeks are flushed red from the bitter breeze of the cold, but it’s the first time since he’s moved here that he hasn’t noticed or even cared about how cold it was, because building a snowman is fucking awesome.

“Sure is,” Scott nods his head in agreement as they lower the head onto the body and pat the snow around it so that it sticks.

“We’re totally going to win.” Stiles pulls out the top hat that he managed to find chucked in the back of a pile of old things in Ms Patty’s barn, he asked if he could borrow it and Ms Patty had said “of course honey.” He places the top hat on the snowman, and fishes out the extra scarf he has and wraps it around the snowman’s neck.

“Someone’s competitive,” someone says from a short distance away and Stiles looks up to see Kirk and Ian standing by their snowman as they place the finishing touches on – and Stiles already immediately hates them, because their snowman is amazing, a work of art. It could hardly even be called a snowman, not in the traditional sense anyway – it’s more like an art deco snow person.

Kirk and Ian’s snowman has a top hat just like Stiles and Scott’s, except they made their top hat out of snow and is resting perfectly on top of the snowman’s head, melded together flawlessly. It looks like the snowman - no snowperson - is wearing a long coat with etches and grooves showing a collar and buttons, and in the snowperson’s hand is a long cane that looks to be made out of snow and ice that the snowperson is using as it’s hunched over. It looks unreal. Cheaters.

“Shut up man,” Scott barks back and grabs Stiles attention as they stick the carrot nose on.

The final buzzer goes and everyone stops what they’re doing, Laura, Taylor and Ms Patty making their rounds, whispering to each other and writing down notes.

Erica and Boyd actually managed to stop sucking face long enough to build a snowman and Stiles has to admit it’s kind of an adorable snowman. They managed to make it look like the snowman was on its head, its twig hands made to look like it’s supporting the snowman as it does a headstand. The other groups snowmen look much like Stiles and Scott’s, nothing too fancy. Kirk’s and Ian’s just look _way_ too overdone; they should be disqualified for being so tacky. Lastly, Isaac and Derek’s is the worst looking snowmen ever to grace this earth. It’s half falling over on its’ side, looking like it’s about to topple over any minute and there’s no face, so to speak off. No rock as eyes, no carrot as a nose or anything, it’s just a faceless snowman.

After the three judges have made their rounds to see all the snowmen, written down their notes, Laura makes her way back up to the gazebo ready to announce the winner.

“While **most** of the snowmen are something to be marvelled at,” she pointedly looks in Derek’s and Isaac’s direction when she says most, a twist of her lips before she continues, “the other judges and I have come to a conclusion that Kirk and Ian’s snowmen has won!” She claps her hands together as everyone else does as Kirk and Ian jumping up to bump their chests together in celebration. Laura walks down to where Kirk and Ian’s snowman is and puts a ‘first place ribbon’ on.

“Bullshit,” Stiles mutters under his breath but still claps nonetheless.

“Next year man,” Scott says patting Stiles on the back. “We still had fun.”

“Yeah,” Stiles relents smiling; he’d totally build another snowman right here right now if he could.

After the contest is over everyone barrels into Luke’s diner, into the warmth and the smell of coffee and food. They all shove tables together, making a lot of unnecessary noise ready to eat. Luke looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.

“Nice snowman you two,” Stiles says waggling his eyebrows and Isaac and Derek when they take their seat. “Although I thought you would have made a snow gypsy,” Stiles laughing at his own joke.

“Too bad you didn’t win,” Derek grunts, smirking.

“We totally deserved too,” Stiles says pouting, soon getting distracted as Luke dumps a mug of coffee in front of him.

Derek’s completely, unbiased opinion agrees with Stiles. Really, it’s unbiased.

-

“It’s 1:30 in the morning, have you gone insane?” Isaac is chasing after Derek in nothing but his sleep pants and a t-shirt and a pair of slippers. Werewolf or not, walking around in the dead of a cold winter’s night isn’t enjoyable in only a t-shirt, house slippers and cotton sleep pants.

“You didn’t have to come,” Derek huffs.

“You **texted** me,” Isaac screeches.

“I thought you’d like to get a little aggression out, have some fun,” Derek says nonchalantly.

“And we couldn’t have done this at a sane hour, when the sun is up?”

“Nope.”

Derek comes to a complete stop and Isaac almost barrels into him, it’s too late for this shit. Isaac was nice and comfy in his bed when Derek had texted him.

“Why are we in the village square?” Isaac whispers.

“To have a little fun,” Derek answers before he kicks his leg out and it connects with a snowman as it starts to crumple to the ground. The snowman currently being offended just happens to be the first place, prize winning snowman built by Kirk and Ian.

“Oh my God, you have gone insane,” Isaac hisses.

Derek turns his head to look at Isaac, raising his eyebrow before he kicks out again, more of the snowman falling to the ground.

“Okay, okay, wait. I wanna try,” Isaac says finally an evil grin taking over his face. He pushes Derek aside, balls his hand into a fist and aims his punch right at the head of the snowman, the snow-made top hat falling to piece on the ground. “You’re right, this is fun.”

“That’s what I thought.”

It only takes a few more minutes before the snowman is no longer a snowman but a pile of snow on the ground, blending in to the rest. The first place ribbon lying among the heap. Derek bends down, picks up the ribbon and walks to where Stiles and Scott’s snowman is. He tacks on the ribbon, mindful not to be too forceful before the whole thing collapses.

 Once it’s on, he steps back takes a look, an approving nod before saying, “we can go now.”

“You really are crazy,” Isaac mutters heading back in the direction of his house, “but then so am I for even following you out here.”

-

The next morning as everyone is on their way to work or to Luke’s diner; they can hear the shrill scream of Kirk who’s on his knees in front of where his snowman used to be.

“I’LL FIND WHOEVER DID THIS,” he yells at the top of his lungs before curling in on himself, looking like he’s about to cry – and not a grown man who should have a little more self-respect.

“What the – ” Stiles starts when he takes in the scene unfolding in front of him, Kirk and Ian’s snowman disintegrated into a pile of nothing on the ground. He notices that his snowman is still standing, and now has a blue ribbon gently blowing in the wind. He walks over to get a closer inspection when he realises that the ribbon is actually the first place ribbon. Stiles almost chokes on his spit, a mixture between surprise and a laugh before he gently takes the ribbon and shoves it into his jacket pocket, face in a wide grin and as he heads in to work.

-

And if Derek gets a little satisfaction in seeing the smile spread across Stiles’ face while he’s on his way to the mechanic shop, as Stiles gently crams the ribbon in his jacket pocket that morning, well that’s just all fine and perfectly dandy.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing about Christmas in June - what is wrong with me?!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some more fluff before the drama ensues!

Wulfstan is seriously like some magical fairy tale village bullshit or something – Stiles is positive. He wakes up early Christmas morning to a blanket of freshly lain slow outside, with more snow falling gently over everything and it’s breathtakingly beautiful. Normally Stiles isn’t a fan of snow, but on Christmas who doesn’t want a little snow?

Stiles bundles up in his jeans, a tacky snowman sweater that he bought a few days ago shoves all of Laura and Derek’s presents in a larger bag and gets ready to head to their house. Laura had told him to be there for around 9am so that they could open presents and have some breakfast and Stiles wasn’t about to turn down home-cooked breakfast – not in a million years.

Laura opens the door wearing a green knit sweater and sleep pants, with a large red and white Santa hat on her head and it’s the most adorable thing Stiles has even seen. He never thought he’d see his boss in sleep clothes let alone a Santa hat. Which makes him think about his old boss back in Beacon Hills, a grumpy 50 something year old man with a pudgy stomach and balding head – Stiles definitely doesn’t want to see him in _his_ sleep clothes.

Laura ushers Stiles in and then Stiles stops dead in his tracks because now, now what he sees is the absolutely most adorable thing Stiles has even seen in his life, also the funniest – which explains why he almost drops the bag he’s carrying and doubles over laughing. Derek is also in a large red and white Santa hat that’s lopsided on his head, with a red knitted sweater with a picture of Santa on it and Rudolph boxers. Derek narrows his eyes and scowls at Stiles until Stiles finally manages to catch his breath and get some oxygen to his lungs.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Derek growls when Stiles tries to fish his phone out of his pocket and snap a picture.

“Aw c’mon Gypsy, where’s the Christmas spirit? Oh right, you’re wearing it all,” but Stiles pockets his phone, he has all morning to sneak a picture and he fully intends to.

“Don’t worry Stiles, we take a family photo every year, I’ll make sure to send you a copy as well,” Laura chimes in as she takes the bag of presents Stiles brought and scatters them around under the tree. Stiles smirks when he sees Derek’s scowl deepen, because ha!

Breakfast is one of the most mouth-watering meals Stiles has ever had and he secretly wonders if Luke came in here to make breakfast. They have snowmen and gingerbread men shaped pancakes doused in syrup, whipped cream, fresh fruit and even little M&M’s made to look like buttons, coffee (okay, not Luke’s coffee but still delicious nonetheless) and Stiles spies some decorated cookies in the kitchen for later. He’s seriously going to go into a sugar coma but he thinks it’s totally worth it.

After the breakfast plates are cleared the three head back into the living room where there’s a large, real Christmas tree decorated to the nine with all brand new looking decorations with a large shiny gold star on the top. How the hell they even managed to get that inside is a wonder. They start off handing out presents; Laura and Derek give them each other’s gifts which mainly consists of clothes. Stiles has to laugh trying to picture Derek pick out woman’s clothes for his sister. Laura gives Derek some t shirts that are brightly coloured and Derek looks like he might have a heart attack because clearly he only does white, black or grey clothing.

Laura gives Stiles his present from her and he greedily rips into the paper to reveal a shiny new DVD/Blu-Ray player – and he nearly drops it by how surprised he looks. Laura explains that she knows Stiles likes to watch his movies and ends up normally watching it on his laptop and he might as well watch it on a larger screen TV. Stiles clutches it to his chest as if he was  a10 year old again and says his thanks a million times over. Stiles hands Laura her present, the first one a little gag gift which is a mug that reads “#1 Boss,” Laura laughs and tells him she’s going to take that into work and use it every day and flash it in front of Boyd who’s never given her one. His next gift to her is an all-expense paid day trip to the spa - or what passes for a spa here - so that she can have a relaxing day _out_ of the office. Laura looks genuinely touched and brings Stiles in for a hug.

Next, Stiles darts under the Christmas tree to bring out a little bag and hands it to Derek. Derek takes the bag and tugs the colourful tissue paper off the top and grunts when he sees what’s in the bag. Laura badgers him until he takes out the content. First, there’s a small magic crystal ball keychain that has metal fingers with long looking nails holding it and then there’s a box of tarot cards. Laura nearly falls off her chair laughing when she sees what they are and Derek has a small smirk like he’s trying not to laugh or show any sort of emotion.

“You gotta admit it’s hilarious,” Stiles points out, “like I could resist the prime opportunity to buy you this stuff!”

“You’re crazy,” Derek mutters but turns the box of tarot cards over in his hands as he inspects the keychain.

Stiles snorts because hello, not the first time he’s heard that before but grabs the card that he also brought wedged in between the branches of the tree and hands it to Derek.

Derek raises his eyebrow but opens the envelope anyway, and when he opens the card music starts blaring, ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,’ and it just happens to fit with Derek’s whole outfit – Stiles couldn’t have planned that better if he tried. A piece of folded glossy paper falls out of the card and Derek picks it up and opens it.

“I uh ordered it online but I didn’t have time to pick it up, it’s a few towns over.”

Derek looks shocked as he looks at the picture. Stiles had asked Laura what the hell he should buy for Derek because it’s not exactly like he’s the easiest person to buy for, despite Laura saying whatever he bought Derek would like. After some more badgering, Laura finally told Stiles that Derek’s been looking at this fancy pants ball bearing tool chest, that has six drawers and locks so that he can keep his tools in there and not have and of the other mechanics use his stuff. Stiles immediately went online and looked it up and before he even realised and ordered it.

“Thanks,” Derek says in a bit disbelieving tone.

“I hope it’s the right size and everything,” Stiles says scratching the back of his neck – he doesn’t know why he’s all of a sudden getting clammy and nervous.

“No, it’s good,” Derek reassures Stiles quickly.

Derek has a genuine smile on his face now, not a quirk of the lips or a smirk at his gag gift but an actually happy smile – one Stiles hasn’t yet seen, but it’s a look that suits him perfectly.

“You better have bought Stiles something,” Laura threatens as she looks under the tree but there are no more presents, “I told you to get something ages go.”

Derek ignores his sister shooting her an exasperated look as he leaves the room and enters back a few minutes later and drops a bag in Stiles’ lap, there’s no tissue paper but at least it’s partially wrapped. The bag hits Stiles’ leg and he lets out a yelp of pain because whatever’s in the bag is heavy and kind of hurt.

Stiles puts his hand in the bag and removes the contents when a startled look takes over his face. “This is from the civil war,” Stiles says dumbfounded.

“If you say so,” Derek smirks.

Stiles is holding the doorknob he’d seen as Ms Kim’s, the one he nearly dropped when she startled him.

“Not me, Ms Kim said so; she could be lying for all I know.”

Derek gets back up and Stiles can hear something being dragged down the hallway, when Derek enters the room Stiles’ eyes always bug out because Derek’s carrying the very same brown leather arm chair and ottoman that he wanted to buy at Ms Kim’s that day – but she wouldn’t accept a deposit.

“Dude, is that for me!” Stiles screeches jumping up from the ground.

“I didn’t buy it for myself,” Derek huffs.

Stiles plops himself down on the chair and wiggles his bum around it until he’s comfortable and props his feet up on the ottoman. Laura and Derek are standing beside each other with equally amused looks on their face.

Stiles doesn’t realise the minute he jumps up and brings Derek into an awkward embrace of a hug. Derek seems startled a minute, gone completely rigid before he brings one arm around to clap at Stiles’ back before Stiles comes to his sense and moves away – redness creeping down his neck. He tries to cover it up by bringing Laura into yet another hug despite them saying their thanks already.

“We should put those tarot cards to use,” Laura declares suddenly grabbing the cards from where Derek put them on the couch.

They settle around the dining room table where they earlier had breakfast, Derek and Stiles sitting beside each other and Laura on the other side of the table, they work out that Laura will read Stiles, Stiles will read Derek and Derek will read Laura. Both Laura and Stiles look giddy with excitement while Derek looks sceptic – the might as well have a dog choosing their cards.

Laura shuffles the cards and places them down on the table telling Stiles to choose his card; his hands linger around a bunch of cards before he settles on one and flips it over. The card reads ‘Fool’ and is a picture of a jester with the joker hat, throwing what looks like three balls in the air with a bindle resting over his shoulder.  Laura makes a ‘hmm’ under her breath as she flips through the book to find out what Stiles’ card says about him and his future.

“In general,” Laura starts, “the joker indicates a new beginning, something that usually has a deeper meaning such as meditation or a relationship – often depicted as an ‘important fresh start.’ In work, others may not understand your choice or ideas but if you know you’re where you belong and you’re happy, keep going and helps those that don’t understand, to understand. For love, it can mean that you’re not ready for a commitment, even if someone is pressing you however don’t let the temptation of just having fun make you overlook the chance for the ‘real thing’ should it ever come your way. Lastly, for health you’re apparently accident prone, and shouldn’t be taking any silly chances.”

Stiles is a little baffled because Jesus Christ if some of that doesn’t apply to him. Danny and Lydia didn’t understand his decision to move to fuck knows where and leave behind everything familiar all for a new job, he’s _not_ looking for a relationship or any sort of commitment and even if he were (like with Ian) he shouldn’t let the idea of fun overtake the possibility of there being something else real out there, and as for accident prone – well yeah that’s nothing new.

He takes the cards and shuffles them before laying them out and telling Derek to pick his card. Derek for his part doesn’t grumble – he probably knows that he won’t be allowed to leave the table until they get this over with, so he flips his card. The card reads ‘The Hanged Man’ and is a picture of a man hanging upside down in tights and a tunic from a tree branch.

“In general,” and now it’s Stiles’ turn to start, “the hanged man shows that you’re at a crossroads, with two options such as ‘up and down,’ ‘in and out,’ or ‘yes and no.’ You might find yourself very much wanting to do something but you don’t know how, when or if to do it. If that’s so, it’s a sign that you should take a step back, relax and possibly let go. In work, nothing much seems to be happening you may even dislike your job and be sick of it, if that’s so, you should figure out if there’s something you can do about it. For love, it may be time to let go of an ‘unattainable lover,’ or let go of a vision you have for a certain relationship because it’s not the only way to be happy. Lastly, for health your health improves but it’s a process.”

Stiles clears his throat as he shuffles back the cards and hands them to Derek – Derek has a pinched look on his face like he’s eaten sour grapes or something.

Derek will never admit not out loud and barely to himself how much that card reading hit home for him – so naturally, he thinks it’s a bunch of bullshit. There’s no way cards can read the future or describe how someone is feeling – don’t people naturally try and fit a reading to fit their idea of what’s about to happen? Yeah that’s it.

Derek shuffles the cards with a sigh and places them out letting Laura pick her card. Laura claps her hands together and flips hers over. The card reads ‘Justice’ and is a picture of a woman in a long draping dress covering her whole body, she’s seated with a crown on her head, a sword in her right hand and the scales of justice in her left.

“In general,” Derek mumbles, “the justice card depicts the need for fairness, balance and harmony. You feel the need to operate in a balanced and reasonable fashion. If you are directly involved with the courts, it’s likely to be resolved in your favour. In work, you need to be sure that your work life and personal life is balanced, too much emphasis on one or the other throws your life and a balance between the two is a necessity to thrive. For love, if you’re single this is a time when a relationship may be coming your way and are likely to find it very soon. Lastly, for health it’s important to stay in the moment, pay attention to how you’re doing and everything must be taken in moderation.”

“Well, I’d say I balance everything perfectly,” Laura clears her throat, shuffling the cards and placing them back into the pack.

“Right,” Derek snorts, ignoring the death glare his sister is shooting him at the minute, “you spend more hours at the Town Hall than you do at home.”

“Well it’s not easy taking care of a whole village is it?” Laura shoots back.

Stiles can tell this isn’t the first time they’ve had this argument, and it probably won’t be the last – and its Christmas day, there shouldn’t be fighting on Christmas day. So he stands up, and declares that they should have some of those delicious cookies he saw sitting in the kitchen and find something else to do.

At least both Laura and Derek have the audacity to look a little sheepish at their bickering and agree. They end up snuggled on the couch with Miracle on 34th Street playing, Laura explains that they watch it _every_ Christmas and they’re not going to break tradition.

Stiles wakes up sometime later with his head pillowed on Derek’s shoulder and his legs tangled with Laura’s. He jolts straight up instantly trying to inconspicuously wipe the drool from his chin.

“Hello sleepyhead, you’ve already made a puddle on Derek’s shoulder anyway,” Laura smirks.

Stiles blushes and glances at the wet spot on Derek’s shirt and yup, he did that. Totally embarrassing. At least Derek doesn’t look like he wants to murder Stiles – not that he looks thrilled either, but not being murdered maybe that’s just another Christmas present.

“Falling asleep on my boss’ couch with her and her brother, not at all awkward.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Laura shrugs untangling her legs from Stiles to stand up and stretch. “I’m going to go get ready for dinner tonight.”

-

The Great Wolf Lodge is the busiest Stiles as ever seen it. No scratch that, it’s the busiest he’s ever seen _any_ place in Wulfstan. There’s more people scattered about than anyone at Luke’s and House of Wolf combined. There are children running around a ginormous Christmas tree with presents wrapped underneath it, adults mingling about chatting to each other with glasses of wine and bottles of beer in their hands.

Stiles is soon pulled into the usual gang of people, Scott, Erica, Boyd, Isaac, Dean, Rory and Lane. Someone hands Stiles’ a beer as they all mingle about. Scott brags about the newest game that his mom bought him for Christmas and Rory ruffles his hair saying it’s the most adorable thing in the world – Scott is apparently such a mama’s boy. Erica goes on about the newest sex toys that she bought for her and Boyd to use and everyone cringes saying they don’t need the specifics.

At 8pm on the dot everyone is ushered into the massive dining room in the Lodge that Stiles had never seen before, there are rows of tables all pushed together to form a large box-shaped U with chairs on either side – so that everyone is sitting at the same table. There are Christmas themed party poppers on everyone’s plate, with flickering candles, pine cones and other little decorations in the middle of the table with room to set down trays of food.

Everyone pops their party poppers, some getting little wine glass charms to put around the stem of their glasses, different coloured paper crowns to wear, cheap key chains and jewellery. It’s nothing fancy but everyone loves their gifts playing with it for a few minutes before chucking it to the side. Stiles gets a red paper crown and immediately sets it on top of his head. Boyd and Derek also get one but they look a little more dubious to put it on before everyone badgers them into doing it. Stiles isn’t surprised to see that Luke also got a paper crown but he opts not to wear his, in fact he’s not even wearing his normal backwards baseball cap that Stiles figured was permanently glued to his head. Instead he’s dressed up in a nice pair of slacks and button up shirt, no plaid or jeans in sight and talking to a beautiful brunette – scratch that, the brunette is talking to him a mile a minute and Stiles recognises her as Rory’s mom. Aw little Luke has a crush.

 The food is just as good as Stiles expected it to be, he seems to see double or triple of everything as numerous turkeys, hams and chickens come out followed by various plates of vegetables, gravy bowls and more bottles of wine. Everyone digs in as soon as the food is placed on the table like they’re scared it’s all going to run out in a matter of minutes – which Stiles doubts because there’s a _fuck ton_ of food. He wouldn’t be surprised if everyone passed out the minute they finished their meal from all the turkey and other food they’re cramming their stomachs with; not that Stiles isn’t doing the same.

He almost has a heart attack when he sees the plates being cleared away and then dessert is on its way out. There’s a cake made out of cinnamon buns made to look like a Christmas tree with coloured sprinkles baked in with icing drizzled all over it, gingerbread men cookies, Christmas pudding and any other Christmas related dessert every known to man. Stiles looks just as excited as the children giddily clapping their hands waiting to dig in.

After dinner and dessert is served Laura stands in the middle of space between the tables to explain that there’s coffee, tea and hot chocolate being served, presents for the children being handed out and horse drawn carriage rides outside for two people at a time and to enjoy the rest of the night, and drink up.

Stiles watched as the children scramble to the large Christmas tree looking for the present with their name on it so they can rip into it, excited to get yet another present from Santa. He remembers going to his dads Christmas parties at the police station when he was younger, and there’d be a man dressed up as Santa and the children each had a turn to sit on his lap while Santa handed them a present. Stiles used to think it was the bomb that he’d be getting an early present from Santa – except, of course now he knows that the present was just even _more_ money parents had to spend to buy yet another present to pretend it was from Santa. While the kids thought Santa was awesome, the parents never getting any of the credit. It was still adorable seeing kids get excited though.

He soon joined the line of people waiting to get drinks when he smelled hot chocolate being made, but not just any hot chocolate, candy cane hot chocolate. It was mouth-watering. Turns out, Luke was the one handing out he coffee’s and tea, and the candy cane hot chocolate was his creation – which just confirmed Stiles’ thought that it was going to be delicious. Luke grunted as he handed Stiles’ his hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup sending him on his way.

There was no way Stiles was going to miss the horse drawn carriage ride, not when it was getting dark and the village Christmas lights were on and it looked straight out of a picture book. His eyes scanned the room for Scott, ready to drag him along even if he protested but he was nowhere to be found. Whatever – he headed outside and hopped in the carriage, rearranging the blankets provided to keep himself warm and told the driver he was ready, taking a sip of the scrumptious hot chocolate.

Just as the carriage lurched forward starting their journey throughout the town, it shook as someone jumped in and sat beside Stiles startling him.

“What are you doing?!” Stiles screeched nearly dropping his hot chocolate – and oh there would be hell to pay if he dropped it.

“Well I heard it was two to a sleigh, no more no less. You were breaking the rules,” Derek replied pointing his finger at Stiles.

“You could have hurt yourself!”

“I live on the edge. I can jump out if you want.”

“And hurt yourself and then the blame is on me? No way man.”

Stiles then proceeds to ignore Derek by taking a sip of his hot chocolate, because it’s not like he’s going to admit it’s nicer to have someone on the sleigh ride with and not be on his own like a total loner. He rearranges the blanket so that it’s also draped over Derek’s lap because he’s only in a sweater and a pair of nice pants – pants which Stiles heard Derek arguing with Laura earlier on back at their house, and why couldn’t he just wear jeans? Laura evidently won the fight.

“Don’t fall asleep on me and start drooling,” Derek jokes. “I’m sending you my dry cleaning bill.”

“Have you ever stepped foot in there?” Stiles snorts. “Besides, there’s no way I’d fall asleep now, the view is just too perfect.”

There’s a few minutes of silence before Stiles speaks again, happy that the redness in his cheeks can be hidden behind the excuse that it’s cold outside.

“I meant the village view, by the way.”

“And here I thought you were talking about me,” Derek drawls snatching the cup of hot chocolate from Stiles and draining the last few bits.

“Seriously man, we’ve had this conversation before – cooties! Not to mention I kinda love that stuff.”

“Luke will give you another one when we get back.”

“Yeah right, he always tries to cut me off anyway.”

“I can be very persuasive,” Derek shrugs.

“Somehow I can believe that.”

The sleigh is just rounding the gazebo when the partial remains of the snowmen that the village made a little over a week ago still stands – surprisingly enough Stiles and Scott’s is still fully intact. Stiles smiles like a goon when they pass by it as he starts to retell the story to Derek about how the next day after the competition Ian and Kirk’s snowman was annihilated and Stiles’ snowman had the first place ribbon on it – and how awesome was that?

Derek, for his part nodded his head pretending he hadn’t heard or known about this story – despite the fact that he _was_ the helping hand that made that little scenario happen. It was nice to see Stiles so animated talking about something as trivial as a snowman.

When they make it back out front of Great Wolf Lodge Derek hops out of the sleigh and slinking off to whatever corner it is he seems to constantly lurk in while Stiles goes back inside to get another cup of hot chocolate – because why not? It’s Christmas, he’ll overload if he wants to!

He finally finds Scott talking to Isaac and berates him for bailing on him because he wanted to go on the sleigh ride together. Scott looks sheepishly away saying sorry, he went with Isaac but he’d totally go again if Stiles wanted to – Stiles rolls his eyes saying it doesn’t matter, he already went.

“But I don’t like you,” Stiles narrows his eyes at Isaac, “Scott’s my best friend, not yours.”

Isaac shoves Stiles, bringing him into a headlock until Stiles has to tap out saying he gives up – because no matter how hard he tries to kick his legs out and trip Isaac or push him off, the dude won’t budge. Isaac can’t stop laughing while Stiles shoots him a dirty look before he and Scott start laughing too.

Nothing ruins the magical day of Christmas and Stiles is genuinely surprised that he doesn’t spend the day dwelling about not having his father around or not being back in Beacon Hills – Wulfstan managed to be just the distraction he was looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know crystal balls & tarot cards aren't necessarily related to Gypsy's (and that word in itself is bothersome to some people) and whatnot but it was a gag gift & not meant to be insensitive or anything like that - just a heads up.  
> OH YEAH and clearly my love for Gilmore Girls is bleeding through if you remember the sleigh ride!


	10. Chapter 10

Okay, they’ve gone and done it. Brainwashed him, warped his mind, put cocaine in the water system or better yet in Luke’s coffee but whatever the reason they had to have done _something_ because Stiles officially loves it in Wulfstan. He’s still riding the Christmas high – as is everyone else in the village – everyone is still cheery, a spring in their step and it’s like a fresh of cool, crisp winter air.

Stiles has grown accustomed to seeing Luke’s grouchy face every morning at the diner, to cross the street when he sees Ms Kim walking about, having his usual lunches with Boyd and sometimes Erica if she’s not busy at the school. He’s used to hanging out with Scott way more often than two men should probably be hanging out and seeing Derek at the diner. He’s even come to embrace the quirkiness that defines the village.

The worst thing though? The worst thing is Derek Hale. Stiles doesn’t know what happened, it came completely out of left field but know all he can think about is stupid Derek in his Christmas outfit with a Santa hat on – and how Stiles would just _love_ to see him on with nothing but that hat. He knows he can’t do anything about it though, doesn’t even _want_ to do anything about it because he respects Laura too much to get involved with a family member and forever fuck up their working relationship. Stiles will get over it.

Except he won’t, he knows he won’t because once his mind if focused, whatever he zeros in on whatever he focuses on, he doesn’t let up. He wishes he could get a shot or something, make the Gypsy feelings go away. If he could go to Melissa and get a shot, he totally would. But then that would mean he’d have to admit it _out loud_ and that’s worse than just admitting it in his head. No he’ll suffer in silence and maybe after a few rounds with his vibrator, jack off sessions or a random hook up (from outside of the village) he’ll be cured, not cursed.

-

The few days after Christmas things rapidly start returning to normal, adults going back to work, kids scurrying around building snowmen and snow forts to host snowball fights (which Stiles totally wants in on, by the way). Stiles has settled back into work, managed to hook up his DVD player from Laura downstairs in the family room ready to re-watch all the seasons upon seasons of shows he has. He’s made a Stiles’ shaped ass imprint on the brown leather chair Derek gave him, which he’s placed in his room near a reading lamp – he likes to settle in and read whatever book he feels like that night.

Stiles had spoken to Lydia on Christmas Night, she was apparently flying out to Paris or something for New Year’s Eve and Stiles was maybe a _little_ jealous – but he was still touched that his best friend from home hadn’t forgotten about him just because he moved away. She tried to convince him that he should join her, because who doesn’t want to go to Paris for New Year’s Eve? Except to be perfectly honest, Stiles doesn’t even _know_ where the closest airport is. He hasn’t even stepped foot outside of Wulfstan since he’s arrived – which he thought he’d be running for the boarders by now. Apparently not.

 The most surprising thing is that Stiles didn’t even do any after Christmas shopping! Alright, it’s not like he went out for clothes or underwear or anything like that. Instead he’d wake up at the ass crack of dawn and line up to get his video games and DVD for dirt cheap – he wasn’t above pushing people out of the way. He was even so inclined as to have a whistle, handing one to Danny so that when they got everything on their shopping list they could leave – like in Friends – but no, they never actually did that (because Danny sucks). Stiles doesn’t even know where the closest mall is usually having to rely on the family run businesses here and what passed for a low rent Blockbuster (how can you even get more low rent than Blockbuster?).

Scott is sprawled out on Stiles’ couch, the popcorn freshly popped and cans of Coke ready. Stiles is popping in the first season of NCIS ( _“Scott, how have you never seen it? It’s amazing! We have ten seasons to get through. No, stop groaning”)._

“So do you have New Year’s Eve plans?” Scott asked during their NCIS marathon intermission, they made it through the first five episodes and Scott had to admit he liked it.

“Why yes I do Scott. Just take a look at all my suitors lining up outside the door.”

“I was going to invite you to hang out with me and Allison.”

“Oh the elusive non-existent girlfriend?! As much as I want to meet her, I don’t want to meet her on New Year’s Eve when you guys are sucking face all night.”

Scott threw some left over kernels of popcorn at Stiles a bunch bouncing off his head and rolling along the ground.

“I’m going to House of Wolf,” Scott explained, “because she can’t get away for long she works at the Argent Tavern so I’ll see her after she closes the bar but I still wanted to see her just before midnight. I thought it would be a good time for you to meet her.”

“Well when you put it like that, I’m down,” Stiles nodded his head because he _did_ want to meet this Allison Scott always talked about, his eyes turning to stars and it was the most adorable thing in the world.

“Perfect, now put on the next episode, that Kate Todd chick is hot.”

“She dies.”

“Why’d you ruin it,” Scott threw his arms up in the air.

Well whatever, it was old news anyway.

-

Stiles is kind of dreading tonight, it’s putting the first damper on his otherwise enjoyable past week. It’s not like he’s never had New Year’s Eve kisses or anything – he has been in long-term relationships – but generally, he doesn’t get the whole kissing someone at midnight. It’s ‘cute’ or whatever, okay – but seriously? Pairing off with some random person, _anyone_ so you’re not on your own is just yet another way to make someone feel depressed.

Though the minute Stiles and Scott walk into House of Wolf his mood improves drastically. There’s the thumping of music, crowds of people dancing, standing around the bar and at the tables, chatter throughout with a buzz of excitement and alcohol flowing. It kind of makes it hard to stay down for too long.

They spot the normal gang spread out across three booths at the side of the bar. They all scoot into the booth a little more making room for Scott and Stiles as they signal for the bartender to bring their drinks. Stiles ends up wedged between Isaac and Scott who’s sitting on the outer edge, Derek’s on Isaac’s other side.

“So who’s going to be my midnight kiss?” Stiles slurs as he slides back into the booth. It’s nearing midnight and he’s had enough alcohol throughout the night, coursing through his veins to make him giddy and unable to walk straight.

He’s danced with just about anyone and everyone in the bar. Erica grinded her ass all over Stiles’ crotch and thank God he was too drunk to get turned on otherwise Boyd would have knocked him out. Stiles grabbed Isaac by the hand and made him dance – and now he knows why Isaac was reluctant because the dude cannot dance. Scott laughed his ass off and snapped pictures, Isaac looked like he was ready to maul him. Stiles even managed to get in a dance with Kirk – which _really_ made the whole gang crack up. Except, the ultimate achievement would have been getting Luke to dance, or Derek, because that would have been a sight for sore eyes.

“I think you got Kirk’s hopes up,” Boyd says.

“Nah, I still think he’s in a bit of a bitch fit since his snowman died.” Stiles doesn’t notice when Derek’s lips quirk in a little smile before quickly smoothing over to his usual bored looking expression.

Just as Stiles gets comfortable having been on his feet for too many hours, dancing too many dances does Scott drag him by the bar and leads him to the bar pretending to buy a drink.

“You still coming with me to meet Allison?” Scott whispers - well tries to over the loud music.

“Hell yeah, we leaving now?” Scott nods his head and drags him to the door. When everyone yells out ‘hey where are you two sneaking off to’ Stiles yells back “smoke break!” despite neither him nor Scott ever smoking.

-

“Is this some kind of hazing thing – isn’t that supposed to take place in the beginning not after I’ve been here a fucking month?” Stiles shivers following Scott deeper into the woods, into even deeper piles of snow. He so did not wear the right clothing for this.

Stiles had been under the impression that they would be meeting Allison in a sane, public location, not trekking through the woods in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter. There aren’t any lights, the only illumination coming from the bright stars above, shining through the bare branches. Stiles has trouble keeping up, his feet keep getting stuck in the snow.

“I told you, her dad doesn’t like me.”

“This isn’t some Shakespearean play Scott, you’re both **adults –** wait, oh my God is Allison even legal?”

“What? Of course she’s legal! She’s actually a year older.”

“She’s older, probably more mature and _still_ doesn’t mind having to trek through a forest to see you for what, ten minutes?”

“Love,” Scott sighs and yeah love, how cute.

 They walk a few more minutes and the snow doesn’t seem as deep or thick as it was in the forest, and they stop on a dirt pathway that has a couple of pairs of footprints. On the other side of the pathway, the opposite side to which Stiles and Scott came from is yet another forest. Stiles groans at the thought of having to walk even more when Scott tells him that’s where Allison is coming from.

Scott keeps checking his watch every few minutes becoming more anxious and Stiles thinks it’s the cutest thing ever because Scott looks like a little puppy waiting at the door, or a cat at the window waiting for its owner to come home and shower it with love and affection. Stiles’ little imagery of Scott being a puppy or kitten breaks when he hears a twig snap and the crunching of snow coming from the forest, when a beautiful brunette with curly hair wearing jeans, boots and a leather jacket emerges from the trees – Allison.

“Scott!” she says running the last few feet and hugging him, Scott’s arms immediately wrap around her waist hoisting her up a little before he sets her back on the ground. “You must be Stiles,” she says with a wide smile with prominent dimples, when she and Scott manage to disentangle themselves.

“And I hope you’re Allison, or this night just got awkward.”

Allison laughs as she cuddles in closer to Scott as she continues talking to Stiles. “Scott says you’re his new best friend, his new bromance.”

“He’s stuck with me,” Stiles nods his head, “he’s the first person outside of work that was actually nice to me, I’m a leech that’s latched on now.”

“Well then, I hope we get along and you better keep the girls away from this one,” Allison smacks at Scott’s chest.

Scott sputters saying he’s the best, most loyal boyfriend and Stiles has to agree because Scott’s eye hasn’t wandered once the month or so that Stiles has known him – and despite Wulfstan being a small village, there are a lot of gorgeous girls. Every detail Scott ever mentioned about Allison is true, from her gorgeous looks to her personality and laugh and Stiles can’t help but like her immediately. They’re sickly cute together, the kind of love that’s apparently always in the ‘honeymoon phase.’

“It’s almost midnight,” Scott announces when he looks at his watch again.

“Yeah, yeah I’ll close my eyes,” Stiles says waving his arm around as he brings it to cover his eyes and turns his back to them, “give you two your privacy and all that.”

Allison laughs but it’s soon drowned out by the loud thundering of fireworks – and aw man Stiles wanted to see the stupid fireworks. He barely peeks open an eye and enjoys about 10 seconds of fireworks when he hears a deafening scream over the blasts of fireworks.

Stiles wheels around to see what’s going on – because Scott can’t possibly be _that_ bad of a kisser – when he lets out a shriek that rivals the decibels Allison managed to reach. Scott is on his back on the hard ground with a large arrow embedded in the side of his stomach and the crisp white snow is already turning red.

“Oh my God!” Stiles shrieks again crumpling to the ground to get closer to Scott, “what did you do?!” he yells as Allison.

“Me? I didn’t do any-”

“- Step away, Allison,” a man’s voice says from behind Allison. Allison turns on her heels to see who’s approached as Stiles tries to look while also helping Scott remove the arrow – Stiles feels like he’s about to hurl.

“Grandpa?” Allison gasps.

“Grandpa? What the fuck?” Stiles repeats.

The blood has stopped trickling, which is surprising to Stiles as he wedged the arrow out as is helping Scott to his feet when another arrow flies into his stomach – Scott falls back to the ground with a groan and Stiles yet again shrieks.

“Are you ok- what the fuck is happening with your eyes?” Stiles asks his hands on Scott’s stomach trying to apply pressure. Scott’s eyes are flickering between an almost fluorescent yellow to its normal brown – Stiles think it’s a trick of light from the fireworks, except the fireworks have stopped and Scott’s eyes are still changing.

“Like you don’t know,” the man – Allison’s grandfather, apparently – snorts. “You live in a town full of werewolves and you except me to believe you’re none the wiser?”

“Werewolves?” Stiles yells completely forgetting about Scott and the arrow sticking out of his fucking chest, he stands and faces the elderly man. The man instantly moves the crossbow he has trained on Scott and aims it right at Stiles’ chest. “Werewolves?” he repeats, “yeah and I’m fucking Matilda.”

And Stiles doesn’t know why he even said that, maybe he’s in shock. Allison is still standing there, like her feet are planted to the ground as her eyes dart between Scott and her grandfather – like she’s trying to gauge which way to go.

“Don’t,” the man roars at Allison his gaze then returning to Stiles, “you would do well to choose a side Mr Stilinski, is it? And I can assure you it’s not the side you’re currently standing on.”

“Side?”

“You’re a human obviously, whether you’ve asked for the bite or you’re just that idiotic to run around with wolves I don’t know – but you should be living with humans, your own kind, not this filth,” he snarls momentarily moving the crossbow to Scott again.

“The bite?”

Stiles is starting to get dizzy trying to keep up with the bizarre conversation he’s having with this man – he keeps looking to Allison, for her to explain something, _anything_ but she’s standing stalk still. The alcohol in his system soon fading, turning into a rumble in his stomach that threatens to escape at any minute.

“I thought you were supposed to be bright?”

Stiles was about to open his mouth, he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. Possibly say this is some elaborate and not at all funny joke when he hears a loud roar – more like an echo or roars coming from behind him. He sees people – no not people, _animals –_ running towards him. It takes him a half second to realise that these animals are fucking animals but also human, they’ve got the same clothes on that Isaac, Erica, Derek, Boyd and Laura were all wearing at the bar – and holy shit they are fucking werewolves.

“Ah the party has arrived. Your side Stiles – which are you choosing? There’s a war coming.” the man asks.

Stiles can see Isaac and Erica crouching on the ground around Scott as they try and remove the arrow, Derek and Boyd are standing behind Laura – Laura, whose eyes are burning a bright, fiery red.

“Gerard,” she snarls and just as she’s about to pounce, when the man – Gerard – throws something at the ground and there’s a loud bang and scorching bright flash that causes Stiles and the rest to stumble backwards.

Once the bright light has faded, Stiles’ eyes adjusting to just the light of the stars and the moon does he see that Scott is no longer impaled on an arrow and the bleeding has stopped, and how is that even possible? Isaac and Erica help him to stand on his feet. Gerard is long gone as is Allison.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Stiles breathes.

“Stiles –” Derek starts but abruptly stops when Stiles steps backwards.

Stiles feels his vision blurring, head pounding and the contents of his stomach rolling around before everything turns to black – Derek doesn’t move fast enough to catch him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you it wasn't his fault, didn't I?
> 
> Also, yes I went the route of Gerard being the bad one. Completely ignoring season 3 because I had the idea for this story before seeing it and I have no clue how the hell I'd work in an Alpha pack. 
> 
> This chapter was more of a set up I suppose, of what's to happen!  
> Unless Stiles stays passed out ha.


	11. Chapter 11

“Stiles-” Derek starts but stops when he sees Stiles step backwards. He can see the look of confusion, hurt and worse betrayal in Stiles’ eyes. Stiles looks ghastly white, even in the cover of night surrounded by snow and Derek only realises a second too late that Stiles is falling to the ground. He passes out, his head thumping on the ground.

“Stiles!” Derek says again rushing towards Stiles and crouching down. He grabs hold of Stiles’ shoulder and gives him a good shake, calling out his name but he won’t wake up, won’t budge. Derek ignores the yells and shouts of everyone around him, of the new people running to the scene after hearing all the commotion, his only concern is Stiles and why isn’t he waking up?

Derek is only broken out of his daze when he feels Isaac’s hand on his shoulder. Derek looks up at Isaac, and Derek’s face could rival the paleness in Stiles’ face and if anyone had any doubt Derek cared for Stiles, it shows now.

“Scott,” Derek calls barely above a whisper, “take Stiles back to his place and stay with him. Do not let him out of your sight.”

“But I should stay, shouldn’t I? Help out.”

“Do you really want to face Laura right now?” Derek hisses watching as the realisation hits Scott. It’s bad enough getting on Laura’s bad side on a regular day, but being on her bad side by inadvertently starting a war with the rival town, the hunters - well Derek is just glad it’s not his fault. This time.

Scott nods his head bending down to scoop Stiles up and runs off in the direction they came no less than an hour ago. A lot can happen in an hour apparently. Scott doesn’t slow down, doesn’t look back or talk to anyone as he runs towards Stiles’ house. Once he’s inside he lays Stiles down on the bed and locks the doors and waits for news from Derek or one of the other betas. Scott does the only thing he can think of, calls the only person who’s truly there for him - his mom.

-

“Laura! Laura, the flame has gone out. The candle has blown out in the alcove,” Kirk yells as he runs to the clearing a small group of people have huddled in. He bends over like he’s trying to catch his breath, which doesn’t make sense considering he’s a werewolf.

“Dammit,” Laura growls her eyes flashing red, “Kirk ring the church bells to alert everyone else who doesn’t know what the hell is going on. Get everyone to meet at the Town hall, immediately.”

Laura runs off towards the Town Hall and the rest of the pack has nothing else to do but follow. She ushers everyone into the front foyer of the Town Hall, telling everyone to squeeze in as she ascends halfway up the stairs to address the entire village. She instructs Rory and Lane to take all the children that are groggy and in their PJ’s having been woken up, some crying, some clutching their plush toys or blankets to the basement cellar where the walls are reinforced and safe.

“What’s going on?” Someone demands.

“We heard shouts-”

“Is someone dead?”

“Quiet,” Laura demands, she doesn’t need to shout the authority in her voice carrying throughout the foyer. “There’s been an incident with the people of Verdun-”

“-The hunters! What’s going on?” someone yells.

“ **As I said** ,” Laura reiterates her eyes flashing their luminescent red that silences the room. “There’s been an incident that has led Gerard to take matters into his own hands. He’s acted prematurely and gotten in over his head by declaring war-”

“War!”

“It was Stiles wasn’t it? I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him!”

“It doesn’t matter how the circumstance came about,” Laura booms, “all that matters is that I’m enacting the Strategic Defence Initiative. You all know your areas of expertise, weapons will be handed out - any hunter that steps foot in our territory is fair game. You have permission to kill them. Humans, you have permission to fight but don’t stray past the borders nor are you to go near the borders, protect the village, werewolves you protect the perimeter. Set up any medical supplies at the doctor’s office.”

The village people scattered about the village hall, some looking for their families, some pairing off and going to get their weapons. The plan was not to step foot outside the village because Laura suspects that Gerard has been planning and looking for an excuse to start a war and there may be far too many traps out there. Their best plan of action was defence.

As everyone was running around when Laura finished, she looked about for Derek but couldn’t find him. She knew better than to be surprised and she sure as hell knew where she could find him.

-

“How could you be so stupid? Melissa screeched as she ran up the stairs straight to Stiles’ bedroom.

“How was I supposed to know that Gerard would show up?” Scott screeched.

“Dating a resident of Verdun, that’s just plain idiotic Scott! It took me long enough and a lot of grovelling to get here, to keep us safe and you throw it in the gutter,” at this point Melissa doesn’t even seem angry anymore, just deflated like she couldn’t bother to yell at her son anymore. She looked over Stiles, checking his head for any bumps or swelling.

“Stiles should be okay, just knocked out cold for a little while. He’ll wake up soon.”

“Thanks mom,” Scott whispered sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Oh Scott honey. What is Laura is going to do, there’s nowhere left for us to go,” Melissa sat down on Stiles’ brown leather chair pulling at the hem of her work shirt – a nervous habit usually seen in children.

Scott rushes over from the bed to sit on the ottoman in front of Melissa grabbing her hands to hold in his, to try and reassure his mother that everything will be okay – it just had to be.

“I’ll figure it out, I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you, ever. I’ll never leave, not like how he abandoned us, me.”

Tears well up in Melissa’s eyes as she squeezes Scott’s hand in return brining him in for a hug.

“Oh Scott, he never left because of you. He was always looking for a reason, any one would do. It wasn’t about you.”

Their hug is interrupted when there’s a bang of a door downstairs and Melissa quickly breaks up the hug, grabbing a tissue to wipe her eyes. Scott looks like he’s on edge only slightly relieved to see that it’s Derek bounding up the stairs, rattling the whole house.

“You two should get back to the doctor’s office,” Derek orders the minute he steps in the room, gravitating towards the bed where Stiles is still unconscious.

“Shouldn’t I be helping at the town hall or doing something?” Scott asks standing up a little straighter.

“Yes, I need you at the doctor’s office,” Derek growls, “that way you’re out of Laura’s way and you already have basic medical knowledge. If anyone needs you for something else they’ll get you.”

Scott looked as if he were about to say anything but Melissa gingerly touched his arm to get his attention to lead him down the stairs and back out the door.

“Stiles will be fine,” is the last thing Melissa said.

Derek gave Stiles a quick once over the tension minutely bleeding out of him from Melissa’s words. He was glad to know that Stiles would be okay, but how _soon_ would he be okay. He doesn’t know whether he wants to face Stiles right now, see that look of betrayal in his eyes again – or wait it out a little longer, form some sort of explanation.

There was no use lying now, trying to cover it up with a ‘you hit your head; you must be imagining things’ lie because Stiles is smart, too smart. He’s analytical, checks his facts and rechecks them. There’s no way that he’s living in a village full of werewolves is going to escape his mind – not for a second.

Although Derek is relieved that Stiles will be okay, he realises he’s still feeling odd sitting here in Stiles’ room (which he thought about once or twice – but of course Stiles was actually conscious in all those thoughts) because Stiles is normally the one that fills in the voids. He speaks a mile a minute filling the silence with useless information and facts. Now, now it’s just eerily quiet the barely there breathing of Stiles and Derek’s own thoughts.

Derek doesn’t have much time to sit in silence staring at the shadow of Stiles’ eyelashes on his pale face, the way his mouth is slightly opened and his shallow breaths because he hears her way before she reaches the front door. He doesn’t know whether he’s thankful for the distraction or not – because this could easily go one of two ways. He reaches the bottom of the stairs before she’s barely opened the door. 

“What’s going on?” Derek asks while Laura stomps the snow off of her boots in the front hallway.

“Other than the war that’s been started?” Laura snarled, “I swear I’ll wring that kids head off,” referring to Scott.

Derek has never seen Laura this seething, her eyes void of any emotion other than anger, her body buzzing with _something_. Whether it’s the itch to go out and fight, the anger shaking through her body or just pure nerves.

“It’s not Scott’s fault he’s –”

“- Not his fault? He knew she was an Argent, he knew about Verdun and the tension. He damn well knew what he was doing.”

“Allison’s not like the rest, Chris sheltered her from that life.”

“You fucking would,” Laura yells “you would for the second time in your life fucking side with the Argents.”

Derek’s back hits the wall with enough force to break the drywall, his head thumping and shaking the hanging pictures on the wall. A small but deathly strong hand grips around his neck and despite Laura being shorter Derek can feel the power radiating off of her in waves.

“What,” Derek gasps, “what are you talking about?”

Except Derek knows it’s useless, knows that the one secret he managed to keep – the one dark, guilt-ridden and self-loathing secret he has was never really a secret to begin with.

“You don’t think I don’t know about Kate?” Laura whispers, the tone and quietness of her voice is almost worse than the yelling. “You don’t think as the new Alpha after our family _burned_ alive, our parents, our uncle, our _younger_ siblings and residents died that I wouldn’t find out?”

Derek’s eyes shuts as if clinging to the darkness behind his eyelids will make Laura go away make her words evaporate and let him forget about everything that happened more than 15 years ago. There’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t feel a pang of guilt, hear a laugh that reminds him of _her,_ the scene of a perfume. He was constantly looking over his shoulder expecting to see that sneer and cocky expectant look she always had.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Derek sputtered trying to loosen the grip Laura has around him.

“So I could see the minute it dawned on you that I knew? To have to see that permanent guilt in your eyes every fucking day. You’re my only family left and I was selfish I didn’t want to have to look at you every day knowing we _both_ knew what you caused. But more than that, I couldn’t risk you broadcasting what happened to the rest of the village – there would have been uproar, they’d grab their pitch forks ready to invade Verdun. I wasn’t going to start my legacy as an Alpha by leading people to their death. We’ve had enough.”

Laura’s right. There was no hiding that the fire wasn’t accidental - not when so many people were killed, not just Hales but other residents of the village, some humans. The only damage control Laura could muster up at that point, her first day as Alpha and barely just legal was to half-lie, only tell half the truth to tide over the rest of the residents. She told the residents that hunters had started the fire, but it wasn’t the residents of Verdun – her blood boiled at having to cover for Verdun, for the Argent’s, but it was that or more death. She told them it was passing through hunters, that didn’t know about the treaty signed decades before between Verdun and Wulfstan.

Her only saving grace was Charles, the eldest occupant of Wulfstan and the only person other than Derek and Laura who knew why and more importantly who started the fire. He advised Laura that it was probably smartest not to tell them, that it would only cause more damage than good. She knew he was right, so she took heed of what he said – but in the end it didn’t matter. They’re going to war with Verdun, just 17 years too late.

“Laura,” Derek breaths the fight leaving his body, he sags into Laura’s grip no longer trying to get away. It’s out and he’s defeated there’s nothing he can do or say that’s going to change what happened. He may not have started the war right now, this minute, but it was a long time coming – and _that_ was all because of him. Because he fell prey to a beautiful woman who seduced him, defying her own town and the treaty.

“Deal with Stiles,” Laura orders releasing her grip, “he needs to leave and leave now and never utter a word or he’s a loose end that needs to be tied up. I’m not losing any more people because a kid with a big mouth can’t shut up.”

Laura’s out the door leaving it swinging open as she runs back in the direction of the village square.  Derek slides down the wall feeling nauseous and on the verge of tears.

-

Stiles’ wakes up and it feels like it’s thundering in his head. His vision is a little blurry at first and then he realises that he’s in his bed, under his covers. His clothes are soaked, in turn soaking the sheets around him and he’s anything but warm. His first thought is ‘how the hell did I get here?’ his next thought it unsettling. Everything comes back crashing through his mind like an unforgiving wave and he instantly thinks ‘I need to get the fuck out of here. Get back to Beacon Hills and never leave.’

Then he hears the yelling and a crash, the walls rattling. He feels his heart pounding in his chest, his mind flashing back to the old man – Gerard – with the crossbow, and how he’s managed to find Stiles. He’s going to die. A second later he recognises the voice as Laura, with a few words from Derek.

Stiles wants to get up, to move towards the door to see what’s going on, what’s happening but he’s frozen in place and tries to stop his heart from beating too quickly, for his ears to stop ringing so he can listen to the conversation at the bottom of the stairs.

He sits without moving an inch and can just barely hear the conversation but he does hear it, he can hear the anger and hurt in Laura’s voice, the anguish in Derek’s. He doesn’t quite understand what they’re talking about, but he hears about a fire which explains why Derek and Laura’s parents aren’t around. But then he hears about a treaty and Kate and the other Argent’s and how it’s their fault. The word Alpha echoes in his ears as he tries to put the pieces together – but it’s not easy like he’s missing the corner pieces. The last thing he hears is about him and how he needs to be dealt with or lose ends tied up and he’s not stupid or naive enough to know that means death.

“Derek?” Stiles calls his voice hoarse and barely louder than a whisper. “Derek,” he tries again louder. He isn’t sure if Derek is still there or he left when Laura left but he calls out, not knowing whether he should move; get up, where to go or what to do.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Derek answers trudging just to the entrance of the room.

“Derek what the fuck is going on? I need to get the hell out of here; I swear I won’t say anything.”

“You keep calling me Derek.”

“What?” Stiles asked bewildered – because did he hit his head harder than he thought? Isn’t that his name?

“You never call me Derek, you always call me Gypsy.”

“I – yeah I guess I do?” Stiles replies awkwardly because it’s the most random thing for Derek to latch on to.

“How are you feeling? Melissa said you should be okay,” Derek’s still standing awkwardly at the entrance to the bedroom not wanting to step in and startle Stiles like he did back in the forest.

“I’m feeling like I’m back in college and hot-boxed my college dorm room and on the trippiest fucking high right now. Like high as a helicopter. I’m also thirsty, which yeah.”

“I’ll get you some water,” Derek says turning on his heels and hurdling back down the stairs.

Stiles takes the opportunity to remove the sheets from around his body and gets up searching for a change of clothes, his are still soaked through and it’s making him cold and not able to think straight. He changes into a pair of jeans and sweater barely making it back to his bed sitting in a dry spot when Derek comes back.

Derek hesitates once again but Stiles nods his head and he enters the room handing Stiles a mug – it’s a mug of steaming soup.

“Dude that soup was in the cupboard before I even moved my stuff in,” Stiles wrinkles his nose, but squeaks when Derek tries to take it away because it’s warm, and smells good and it’s probably the only thing he’s going to be able to keep down at the minute anyway.

“I should get out of here,” Stiles says taking a sip of his soup. Derek’s sitting on the chair he bought Stiles. “I swear I won’t say anything, I’ll just go on my way blissfully ignorant.”

“That’s probably the best thing,” Derek nods his head minutely.

“What’s going to happen here?”

“Exactly what you heard, a war.”

“But you’ll win, won’t you? You guys have to, you turn into freaking animals!” and Stiles doesn’t know the exact minute when he was concerned about a war and which side would win, when he was supposed to be thinking about getting the hell out of here. Hightail it outta here and never look back.

“It’s not that easy.”

“But-” Stiles starts, “I can I don’t know help or something.”

“You can help?” Derek snorts the first time a look other than being down crossing his face. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles admits. “But I can’t leave not knowing what’s going on here.”

“If you were smart you’d leave.”

“It has nothing to do with being smart.”

“Stiles, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Derek sighs.

“Well maybe you guys should have thought about that before you offered me a job here,” Stiles snaps. Yeah he knows Derek didn’t offer him the job, but still he can’t exactly snap at Laura right now – and everything he’s seen or heard of Laura this past night, he’s not about to snap at her.

They sit in silence; the only noise is Stiles slurping his soup. There’s no more shouts or yells, no more people running into the house so they take that as a good sign for now.

“I can hack!” Stiles exclaims jumping up a little on the bed.

“You’re going to be sick?” Derek startles reaching for the trash can.

“What? No! Jesus, I meant I can hack Verdun’s system see what they have up their sleeves.”

“I thought you encrypted.”

“I have little experience in hacking, true,” Stiles admits but he brightens up, “but I know the perfect person who can help.”

Stiles make a grab for his cell phone from his soaked pants on the ground and starts dialling a number.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Derek starts trying to make a grab for the phone, “including _more_ people that don’t know about this village can only be bad.”

“Don’t worry,” Stiles waves his hand, “it’s just like encrypting you barely pay attention to the details, it’s just about getting in, or locking it up.”

Derek sighs sitting beside Stiles as Stiles holds up the phone, pointing to his face and Derek realises he’s making a Face Time call.

“Stiles?” a guy grumbles as he accepts the call, the guy has dark hair that’s all mussed up having apparently been in bed.

“Danny! I need your – oh my God! Is someone in bed with you?!” Stiles screeches when he notices the covers on the bed beside Danny shifts.

“You fucking call me after midnight to ask if I have a guy over?” Danny grumbles getting up from the bed, running his hand through his hair and walks out the room. He has perfectly white teeth, prominent dimples for days and earnest looking brown eyes. Derek instantly hates him, this guy; Danny is probably Stiles’ ex or at least friend with benefits.

“No of course not,” Stiles scoffs, “I need a favour.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Danny hisses pacing up and down the hallway, the phone wobbling.

“Listen can you hack into an entire system if you know the town? It would be the main system or a subset of the main system.”

“Of course I can,” Danny rolls his eyes.

“Okay good, listen I need you to hack into the town Verdun’s system in Maine and send me every single file through an encryption packet I send you.”

“I never said yes Stiles. What the fuck is going on?”

“Listen, I just need you to trust me on this one I’m calling in that favour,” and Stiles winks at the phone and Derek bristles even more. Fucking Danny, Derek just wants to punch him in his stupidly perfect face.

“Stiles,” Danny sighs but he already looks defeated walking towards another room and turning on the light. He heads straight for the computer.

“You’re a life saver Danny,” Stiles beams, “text me when you’ve sent it. You’re getting the best birthday present ever!”

“My birthday was last month Stiles,” Danny rolls his eyes but hangs up the phone.

“Shit.”

Stiles tosses the phone to the side and grabs his laptop sending an email to Danny with instructions on how to email all the information so it’s private.

“Told you I could help,” Stiles smirks.

“Yeah your ex-boyfriend is a real life saver,” Derek drawls.

“Danny? Ha yeah right no matter how many times I asked if he thought I was attractive, he never budged. He’s my old co-worker. Anyway we’ll see if there’s anything useful then we’ll go to Laura.”

Derek doesn’t admit feeling slightly happy knowing that Danny isn’t Stiles ex. In the face of everything else going on, Stiles and his relationships shouldn’t be his main focus. But it works for a good distraction from everything that’s about to go down in a matter of hours, even maybe minutes.

Stiles doesn’t know why he suddenly decided to stay, to face the looming unknown danger. He had his chance to be a cop, he gave it all but a minutes thought in his senior year when he was filling out college applications – just be a cop, go into IT or maybe do both? Then he remembers all the times when he was a kid and even as he got older, whether his dad would make it home that night. There was no danger sitting behind a computer though.

But then just a few minutes ago he hears Laura yelling at Derek and the obvious pain in Derek’s voice. He always associated stoicism to Derek that he didn’t let things affect him, always had a clear head. Stiles now realises that it’s anything but true, it’s the exact opposite and Derek’s just a good actor. A protectiveness washes over Stiles, he wants to tell Derek that things are going to be okay – even if he doesn’t know whether that’s true or not.

Even after everything he’s seen this night, how they shifted into creatures, how Scott started healing, how fast they moved and yet in that moment Derek’s voice sounded so little lacking any fight or strength. That’s when Stiles realised he wanted to stay, to fight, to never hear Derek sound that small or broken again.

They just had to survive the war first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So just about every (with the exception of a few - and one really good one I read but can't remember which it was now) fic is all "cute lets get Stiles and Derek together" Laura, and I wanted to switch it up a little. To be honest I love the cute Laura (I wrote that Laura before) and will most likely get there at some point with this one, but I just wanted one where there was some anger and some resentment for the fire. 
> 
> Don't hate me!


	12. Chapter 12

It took Danny no time in emailing Stiles back all the hacked information he got from Verdun’s system. For once in Stiles’ life he was almost begrudged Danny for being so efficient and quick because Stiles had a million and one more questions racing through his mind and he just wanted to ask Derek every single one of them. But then Stiles’ laptop was beeping and he had a new email and the pending war took precedent over Stiles’ curiosity.

Stiles sets up the laptop on the computer desk with Derek hovering behind him, a lot closer than strictly necessary but Stiles isn’t about to complain, as they try and go through the pages and pages of information.

“You’re going too fast,” Derek mutters watching as Stiles scrolls through the pages a mile a minute.

“Perks of working with computers for a living. Just tell me if I should be looking for anything in particular.”

Derek tells him to be on the lookout for any weapons they may have and strategic plans which is what Stiles assumed he’d be looking for anyway. After hundreds of pages of useless information from food, alcohol and toiletries orders do they come across a page of the list of all the residents – and their special “assets.”

There are a dozen or so Argents and Stiles finds Allison’s name and her weapon of choice being a crossbow and he can’t imagine the Allison he met only hours ago, so sweet aiming a crossbow at anyone let alone Scott. But Stiles knows better than to underestimate the power of manipulation and corruption.

Beside the residents’ names and their weapon of choice is other basic information like their date of birth, their date of death if any of them were deceased and stuff ranging from who they were married to, if they had children etc. It was basically a genealogy of the entire town. Stiles’ eyes land on the name Kate Argent, ringing bells to what he heard only moments ago from Laura and as much as Stiles is curious he goes to scroll past it before Derek’s hands fly to Stiles’ wrist to stop his scrolling. Stiles ignores the rush of electricity he feels from Derek’s hand on him – because clearly, it’s all in his head. Or he’s still running on shock and not fully recovered from the injury to his head.

It gives Stiles the time to read the information on Kate Argent except there isn’t very much; it’s not as detailed as all the others are. It shows that Kate Argent is the daughter of Gerard Argent which Stiles knows as the man who shot a fucking arrow into Scott’s chest and that her brother is Chris Argent (the man Stiles met at the Argent Tavern) and Chris is the father of Allison. They really are all connected.

Other than that it doesn’t have Kate’s weapon of choice and Stiles notices the difference between Kate and the other residents is that beside her birthdate to show that the others are still alive it reads their birthdate with a hyphen to show they’re alive. Beside Kate’s is a hyphen with a question mark. Is Kate not in Verdun anymore, has she run away, gone missing, been killed?

“We should get to Laura,” Derek interrupts standing up straight and heading for the stairs, Stiles has no other option but to shut his laptop and chasing after Derek, laptop under his arms.

-

The minute the two men walk into Town Hall everyone that had been shuffling around, lugging equipment or setting up stations stop and stare. The abrupt silence is deafening.

“ **You!”** someone he’s only seen around the village a handful of times – Doyle - exclaims lunging and before Stiles can register what’s going Doyle is on his back with a boot pressing down on his chest.

Doyle struggles for breath sputtering as Derek presses his boot down harder, “it’s his fault,” Doyle gasps, “he brought the hunters here!”

There’s a collective nodding of heads, some in agreement and others backing away from the confrontation. Stiles is a little relieved to the people he thought he could call friends are in fact his friends; they’re the ones edging closer to Stiles ready to defend him. Others are shooting him dirty looks like they’re ready to raise their weapons and shoot him on the spot and ask questions later.

“If you’ve forgotten,” Derek spits out, “the hunters have always been there living a town over from us, this isn’t news. Stiles nor anyone else started this, Gerard did and you’d be wise to remember that. You have a problem you take it up with me or Laura, **not** with Stiles. Unless it’s to apologise.”

Derek emphasizes his point by pushing the heel of his boot harder until Doyle looks like he’s about to turn blue.

“Sorry,” Doyle gasps for breath once Derek removes his boot. He grabs Stiles by the arm and leads him up the familiar staircase to Laura’s office.

“I wasn’t in any peril,” Stiles tries to joke as he’s being dragged up the stairs, struggling not to drop his laptop either.

“On any other day you could have handled them,” Derek concedes, “but they’re riled up and on edge about the war their instincts are to fight not flight and you happened to be on the other end of their fighting instincts. Now, you’re not.”

Derek barges into Laura’s office not bothering to knock before he shuts the door again and locks it. Stiles stumbles in behind him and can see that Laura, Boyd and Charles are already in there huddled around the desk discussing something. It looks as if Boyd has been brought into the loop of what actually happened all those years ago or he’s always known.

“What’s your decision Stiles?” Laura asks without bothering with any formalities, “if we let you leave can you be trusted to never open your mouth?”

“Pretty sure the only answer to that is yes I can be trusted. Lord knows what you’d do if I said no,” Stiles answers scratching the back of his head.

“We can tell if a person lies,” Laura smirks.

Stiles gulps and shivers a little as the three people who were already in the room all stare at him without any hint of friendliness that’s been there the past month. The only semi-relaxing figure is standing behind him – and never did Stiles think that Derek would be a relaxing figure in his life. If he weren’t in a stressful situation he probably would have laughed about it.

“Well it doesn’t matter,” Stiles holds his head high in defiance, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying, I want to help.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Charles finally speaks up.

Stiles waves his laptop in the air like it’s a Holy Grail and in a way it kind of it. It holds all the information that Verdun has and he places it down on Laura’s large desk on top of the papers they were huddled over as he explains as much to Boyd, Laura and Charles. He goes over all the information from the residents in Verdun to their measly shopping expenses just in case something catches their eye that didn’t catch his or Derek’s.

Laura nods her heads, points to certain information as Boyd writes things down while Charles gives his two cents about the information. Stiles doesn’t try and think about the _actual_ pending war and imminent danger looming because he has no idea how he’s actually going to contribute, who’s going to make it out alive and unscathed and worse yet who’s going to die, if anyone?

“I don’t get why Kate’s information is skewed while everyone else’s is up to date. Are you sure this hasn’t been tampered with when you got it Stiles?” Boyd asks but this time his eyes aren’t unnerving or angry they’re genuinely interested.

“What? Of course it hasn’t been tampered with; this is the information straight as it came from Verdun!”

“Stiles is right,” Laura sighs.

“What?” Boyd and Derek ask in unison.

Laura takes a moment to look at Charles, who gives her a slight nod before she speaks again.

“After the fire, in that interim of time when I was becoming Alpha and Charles was helping me, guiding and advising me, we caught wind that Kate had bailed on Verdun. No one knew where she went not even Gerard or her brother Chris. We heard from another pack that she had fled to Quebec, trying to blend in and remain under the radar. So I went there, hunted her down and finished her.”

“You what?” Derek stammered. Stiles stood resolutely still not moving a muscle, not even daring to blink because he had no idea how to take this information. Granted yes, they were heading into a battle so to speak, but the actual confession of killing – well that was a little hard to stomach. Despite what Kate did in the past.

“I couldn’t barge into Verdun could I?” Laura explains, “that would be putting the whole village in danger. But that, _bitch_ ran and thought she could get away with it? Whether Gerard put her up to it or not, she did it and she was going to pay for it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, watch her bleed out from her throat, the defiance in her eyes like she ever had a chance of living, like her pathetic father or brother would come to the rescue. I weakened Verdun, maybe not directly from the top but it was enough to get Gerard searching for her I’m sure, that’s why Chris took over. I’m guessing Gerard caught wind from somebody that her body was found – it’s not as if I ever hid it. I wanted someone to find it. He just had to know where to look.”

“She’s been dead all these years?” Derek whispered, his face looked ashen white before he balled his hands into a fist and advanced around the desk to stand directly in front of his sister.

“She’s been dead all these years,” Derek repeated his voice raising an octave higher, “and you never told me? I’ve been looking behind my back all the years, expecting to see her face, expecting to see her start another fire and she’s been **dead?** Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”

“Because Charles and I talked about it,” Laura glared standing to her full height eyes flashing red in a warning, “either way Derek you would have been carrying the guilt around like a scarlet letter branded on your forehead. The less you knew the better, the less chance of the rest of village finding out.”

“I had just as much as a right to know as you,” Derek looked deflated but his voice still held the anger.

“Well if I die and you become Alpha you can handle the village affairs and what’s good for it at your own accord Derek.”

If it were possible for steam to come out of a person’s ears – which at this point, Stiles wouldn’t have been surprised given everything he’s learned – than it would be coming out of Derek’s right about now. He looked as if he were ready to pounce on Laura much the same he had to Doyle only a few minutes ago but Boyd stepped in between the siblings and Charles cleared his throat.

It was enough of an intervention for Derek to take a step back, take a breath, and turn on his heels and storm out of Laura’s office. Stiles looked between where Laura was standing, Boyd with a firm grip on her upper arm and Charles murmuring something to her and the swinging door that Derek had just exited from, deciding where to go and what to do. He grabbed his laptop from the desk and ran down the stairs yelling at Derek to wait for him.

“I’ve got to blow off some steam, go home Stiles,” Derek muttered before running off.

-

Like fuck was Stiles going to go home and sit around on his ass all night – well early morning, the sun looked like it was about to rise any minute now. He also wasn’t stupid enough to go searching for Derek and wherever he ran off to. He could be anywhere in the dense forest that surrounds Wulfstan and the last thing Stiles needs is another run in with Gerard. The only logical thing to do is make sure his buddy Scott is alright since he hasn’t seen him since a few hours ago in the woods.

When Stiles doesn’t find him at Scott’s house, he knows he wasn’t at the Town Hall so he heads to the doctor’s office. Melissa greets Stiles with a tentative smile and a once over to make sure that he’s okay before she’s pointing to the stairs leading upstairs. He tries the first three doors on his right before he finally finds Scott sitting behind a desk with his head in his hands in a trance like state, drifting between trying to stay awake and just wanting sleep.

“Hey bud, you okay?” Stiles asks closing the door and stepping further into the room.

“It’s my entire fault,” Scott groans, “if we even make it out of this thing alive I’m as good as gone.”

“I – well I mean, I guess you did know Allison was a rival?” Stiles starts wincing as the words come out of his mouth, “but I mean even Derek is on your side, he said something about her dad sheltering her from that life or something.”

“Derek said that?” Scott perks up for a minute before going deflated again, “it doesn’t matter anyway, none of it does now. Allison and I will probably never be together again anyway, and what’s going to happen to me and my mom – well that’s the most important,” Scott looks as if he’s going to break down and cry any second and Stiles just wants to fix it but doesn’t know how.

“What do you mean happen to you and your mom?”

Scott blows a puff of air out of his mouth and starts to explain once Stiles sits down.

He starts off by explaining that he hadn’t always lived in Wulfstan – that he actually used to live in California, only a few hours away from where Stiles used to live in Beacon Hills. He also explains that he didn’t always use to be a werewolf and Stiles wants to interject but keeps his mouth shut, letting Scott get it out in his own time. One night, Scott and his friend Greenberg were out in the forest just fucking around like normal pre-teens do when they weren’t invited to the coolest parties when something attacked him, bit him. Greenberg had helped him back to his place in a rush and stayed with Scott the night just to make sure he was okay, when Scott protested about going to the hospital – because his mother who was on call would find out.

Scott explains that things only became a lot stranger. Once Greenberg went home the following morning, Scott realised the bite marks were gone – and he thought he would have dreamt it all if it weren’t for the blood that had stained his shirt. He didn’t know what the hell to make of it and forgot about it, until the full moon that was.

He started to feel different, his senses becoming heightened, could smell the fear and arousal coming off of people, where they’d been, what they’d eaten, what they’d been doing. He didn’t understand what it meant at the time, the emotions coming off of people – it was just like a tidal wave of scents and tingling wafting towards him. The next thing he knew his body was contorting the night of the full moon, turning into a werewolf and he had almost attacked his parents. Scott’s dad had a shotgun in the house and shot Scott, not realising it was his son until he fell to the ground, blood pouring out of him and he changed back to his human form.

Melissa and shrieked and rushed to the ground to see if her son was okay, Scott’s father had backed away mortified at what was unfolding in front of him. Melissa had shrieked all over again when she had ran for the phone to call an ambulance only to see that her son was healed, the bullet had fallen out of his stomach and the hole had closed over. Scott’s eyes had started glowing yellow and he backed away trying to get away from his parents, lock himself away to keep them safe.

The morning after Scott felt like his old self again, except the heightened senses were still there, only he wasn’t contorting into a werewolf. Melissa looked terrified of her son, but kept him home from school for a few days so they could figure what the hell was going on. Scott’s father didn’t talk to Scott, look at him or come home those first few nights.

Eventually Scott’s father bailed, never to be seen again and it was just Scott and Melissa. Melissa hadn’t known what to do, who to talk to until she somehow found out about Wulfstan and they packed up and moved. Melissa had begged and pleaded with Laura who was the new Alpha to let them stay, to help Scott. Laura agreed and that’s how Melissa and Scott came to be living in Wulfstan.

“But you’re just as much a resident here by now as the rest of them,” Stiles points out.

Scott shakes his head, “I was bitten, and it’s different. I still get looked down upon by some of the people here. They won’t say anything out loud but I can just tell.”

Stiles has questions about the whole being bitten thing, but he thinks he can save that for another time. He also realises that explains why there weren’t any pictures of Scott’s father at Melissa’s house – they didn’t want to remember a man who bailed on his own son.

“And Allison? Do you think she’s really corrupt like her grandfather?”

“No,” Scott rubs his hands down his face, “she hardly had a relationship with her grandfather as far as I knew. He wasn’t around. Chris raised her alone, after her mom passed away. Chris didn’t have a problem with Wulfstan as long as we didn’t have a problem with them.”

“Then we’ll fight for her.”

“What?” Scott startles.

“We’ll fight for her, for your mom for whatever you want. When this is done and over with if you want to stay in Wulfstan then we’ll fight for it, if you want to move get the hell away from here and Verdun and be with Allison, we’ll fight for that. You’re my bud and you’ve been through hell and back you deserve something good. We all do.”

“You think you’d move away with me and Allison and my mom?” Scott jokes.

“As long as I don’t have to see any more arrows in your chest then hell yeah, maybe paintballs because paintballing is awesome.”

“Unless something keeps you here in Wulfstan,” Scott smiles wryly.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stiles admonishes his cheeks turning slightly red, “c’mon let’s get you home and to bed you look like you’re about to pass out.”

Despite Stiles supposed to be the one walking Scott home, Scott insists that he walks Stiles home. After all he is the werewolf and theoretically should be able to handle himself. Stiles doesn’t want to point out what happened only hours ago, besides he doesn’t really want another run in with an angry resident blaming him.

-

The two next days and nights go by without incident. When Stiles arrived home after Scott had made sure he made it safely, it was to find Derek sitting in his room on the arm chair Derek had bought him. Stiles had cause for a near panic attack considering he started stripping out of his clothes as he walked up the stairs to take a shower and wash the nights grime away. So, he stood in his bedroom his hand on his chest trying to calm is racketing heartbeat with no shirt on and his fly open and his jeans half way down his ass.

“Don’t pass out on me again,” Derek’s mouth turning up in a smirk.

“That’s not even funny, what are you doing here?” Stiles starts doing his fly up again so recover some of his dignity.

“Wanted to make sure you’re alright. There’s no use being here on your own in case something happens.”

“My hero. So you just decided to sit in my bedroom?”

“Who else is going to keep watch?

“I’d say you just want to avoid going back to your house and having to see Laura.”

“Perceptive,” Derek raises his eyebrow.

“I’m going to take a shower, I’d say make yourself at home but it seems you already have.”

And Derek really has made himself at home. When Stiles is out of the shower and in his sleep pants and an old Beacon Hills Police Department t-shirt he finds Derek in the living room with a duffel bag at the foot of the couch, Derek sitting and flipping through an old photo album.

They spend the next half hour as Stiles explains who all the people are in the photos; mainly they’re older ones of him and his mom and dad, when they were alive. Some are from high school and he points out who Lydia is and his friend Danny that was on Skype a few hours ago. There are some photos of ex-boyfriends which Stiles just skips over saying that was a life time ago.

Derek nods his head and listens as Stiles talks about his parents, running his fingers over the old photographs like they’ll transport memories from Stiles childhood, a happier time. He doesn’t growl at seeing pictures of Stiles’ ex-boyfriends – because really, that’s just immature (though Derek’s not entirely above it). After Stiles yawned repeatedly he waved his arm in the air and said he was going to hit the sack. He brought down a spare pillow and blanket for Derek to use on the couch.

-

For all the yawning Stiles had done he slept in fits of no longer than a few minutes before he jolted awake thinking he heard something, or was about to miss something. His heart rate would settle down and he’d drift off to sleep before he woke again in the same panic.

“You’re like a jack in the box,” Derek says knocking on Stiles’ door through a yawn, “I can hear you from downstairs.”

“Surprisingly it’s not the first time someone’s told me that,” Stiles sighs referring to being called a jack in the box, “you can come in or whatever. Sorry for keeping you awake,” when he hears the door creak open.

“Everything alright?” Derek asks hovering by the door only coming in when Stiles waves his hand, permission. He sits at the foot of the bed and faces where Stiles is leaning against the headboard.

“Just stressing a little,” Stiles confesses, “talk to me.”

“What?”

“I know you’re a man of a few words but talk to me, I don’t know about your mechanic mumbo jumbo – maybe it’ll put be to sleep.”

Derek grabs at Stiles’ ankle through the comforter in a firm grip, Stiles tries to manoeuvre away laughing except he can’t get very far unless he wants to roll out of the bed. Derek’s hand grabs at Stiles’ other ankle and now Stiles has nowhere to even move, flailing about in the same spot which doesn’t help because he can feel his sleep pants sliding down under the bed sheets.

“Okay,” Stiles breaths out laughing, “okay, okay, I tap out man.”

Derek smirks releasing Stiles from his grip, Stiles narrows his eyes while trying to subtly rearrange his sleep pants so they’re back on his hips where they belong. He doesn’t miss the way Derek’s eyes track the movements happening under the covers.

“So, make yourself useful Wolf Man, talk,” Stiles says absolutely, definitely trying not to think too hard about where Derek’s eyes just wandered. I mean he still has covers hiding his lower body, so it’s not like Derek actually _saw_ anything.

Derek sighs but leans against the panelling at the foot of the bed swinging his feet up to rest by Stiles’ hands and starts to talk. He doesn’t talk about his mechanic mumbo jumbo, just sort of talks about anything and everything. He talks about Isaac and why they’re so close, his mother had passed away and his dad was just an abusive douchebag to say the least. How Boyd is quiet but efficient in everything he does, has a loyalty to Laura not just because she’s the Alpha and boss, Boyd’s love for Erica and how they were high school sweethearts – and how it’s absolutely sickening. How Erica really isn’t all that bad – you just have to get used to her, which means she _is_ a bitch but you learn to realise when she’s being serious and when she’s joking. He doesn’t talk much about his family or Kate and Stiles doesn’t push it and before he knows it his eyes are drifting shut.

-

Stiles wakes up to a foot in his face – which is not cute, at all - and an arm draped over his legs. Derek’s in the exact same spot he was hours ago, only now he’s lying down on the bed without a pillow, his arm causally over Stiles’ legs.

The minute Stiles sits up, Derek’s up in a flash as well blinking around the room. Their eyes land on the clock and it says it’s almost noon. And while usually they should feel guilty for sleeping in so late, it is New Year’s Day so it’s not like they have work to attend to.  

Stiles is about to say something about having a foot in his face – because just, ew – but he did get the sleep he was after and his stomach rumbles. Beside the cup of stale soup Derek had given him the previous night when he woke up from his semi-coma he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink.

“All I’ve got to offer is Lucky Charms or frozen chocolate chip waffles,” Stiles jokes untangling himself from the sheets.

“Both,” Derek answers strolling to the bathroom to take a piss – and hello, this is Stiles’ house; he should get to use the bathroom first.

Stiles pops four frozen waffles in the toaster and putting some coffee to brew before running to the downstairs bathroom to relieve himself. When he comes back out Derek’s at the table pouring himself a bowl of Lucky Charms, he even placed another bowl at the table for Stiles.

Derek shakes his head no when Stiles offers him coffee and it’s startling to Stiles how well they mesh, moving around the tiny kitchen without bumping into each other as they prepare breakfast. It’s domestic in a way Stiles had never expected in a million years – not with Derek anyway.

“So, plan of action today?” Stiles asks through a mouthful of gooey chocolate chip waffle drenched in syrup.

“I guess we see Laura,” Derek wrinkles his nose up – which is adorable to Stiles.

Stiles never had any siblings growing up, or cousins close in age that lived near to him – so he’s often been fascinated about sibling interactions. He always wondered what it would be like; would they bicker in front of their parents but secretly get along when the parents were away? Would they tell each other secrets, loan money to each other to go out and do stupid things like get a tattoo or buy alcohol underage? Would they cover for you when you wanted to sneak out, and leave the latch on the window open so you could sneak back in?

Stiles wonders if that’s how it was with Laura and Derek. Despite their hastiness towards each other at the minute, he has seen them interact before everything happened, especially at Christmas. How Laura made them all huddle in by the Christmas tree with the camera on the tripod trying to get a picture. How Laura teased Derek about the little things – Stiles hopes they get back to that and soon.

After breakfast Derek excuses himself and asks if he can use the shower while Stiles changes his clothes before they head out to the Town Hall. It’s a perfectly bright, sunny day the reflection of the snow making it even brighter and it’s as if there was no pending war, if you ignored the eerie silence and tension throughout the village.

At the Town Hall Laura and Derek at least don’t butt heads. She sighs and tells them that there’s nothing they can do, not yet. They don’t want to make the first move and walk into a trap – they’ll just have to wait until Verdun makes a move, or maybe they’re scared and backed off. Which is unlikely. Except, there’s nothing worse than waiting for the opponent to make the first punch.

So Stiles spends the day with Scott at the Doctor’s office going through supplies and making sure there’s enough of everything while Derek goes off somewhere with Isaac to patrol the borders.

-

It’s not even a surprise or unsettling that night when they’re both ready for bed, in Stiles’ bed talking like the previous night. Except, unlike the night before Derek is sitting beside Stiles with his back also against the headboard. Stiles doesn’t need any more feet in his face.

“I’m telling you, he had a foot fetish it freaked me the fuck out!” Stiles exclaims. Somehow they got onto the conversation of disastrous dates and Stiles was talking about how one his friend (who’s so not a friend anymore because of that date, from college) set him up on a blind date.

“Seriously?” Derek asks dubiously.

“Yes! It started off okay; he wasn’t the greatest looking but then again either am I. Anyway, we were at dinner and talking and this guy walked by in flip flops and he just wouldn’t stop staring! I had to snap my fingers to get his attention and then he just went off about his love for feet, he wasn’t embarrassed or shy about it.”

“So what did you do?”

“I excused myself to go to the bathroom, found one of the waitresses, paid my half of the bill and climbed out the bathroom window.”

“You didn’t?” Derek snorted.

“Oh believe me, I did. At least I didn’t leave him with the whole bill! Granted I probably didn’t have to go out the bathroom window, but we were seated right by the window at the front of the restaurant, I was scared he’d see me.”

“Good thing I don’t like feet then,” Derek says nonchalantly, “hands, maybe.”

“Oh yeah? Like these big guys?” Stiles jokes holding up his hands.

“You have long fingers,” Derek notes looking at where Stiles is holding up his hands.

And whoa, the first thing Stiles thinks about is certainly not what he could be doing with those long fingers. Nope, not at all.  Except, he could totally picture Derek on his back with Stiles nestled in between watching as he opens Derek up, yielding his body to him.

Stiles clears his throat while also trying to clear away those thoughts but he’s suddenly feeling very hot in his sleep pants and t-shirt.

“I can’t be the first person to have ever told you that.”

“No,” Stiles admits, ‘ _but you’re the first person who has said that and I want to fuck your ass with my fingers until you’re grinding down on them,’_ Stiles doesn’t, thankfully, add on.

“Well then.”

“Did you mean it, at the bar that first night?” Stiles blurts out, and where the hell did that come from?

“Mean what?” and Stiles can’t tell if Derek is baiting him or he genuinely is asking.

“When you asked if I was offering? When I said it must get incestuous in this village, sex wise.”

“You’re asking me, if I was serious about asking _you_ if you were offering?” Derek asks raising an eyebrow.

“Well when you put it like that,” Stiles huffs, “I just meant, am I way off base here? Am I going to embarrass myself if I try something? I don’t normally make the first move, like ever.”

Derek shrugs but he’s smiling which settles Stiles a little.

“Oh God,” Stiles groans, “you’re really going to make me do it.”

Stiles closes his eyes, rubbing them with his hands and from one minute to the next he’s turning on the bed and grabbing Derek’s face with his and crushing his mouth against Derek’s. He digs his nails into the nape of Derek’s neck his thumb pressing at Derek’s throat that would otherwise hurt anyone else, but a werewolf. Derek doesn’t seem to mind as he groans into Stiles’ mouth his hand moving to Stiles’ hip as Stiles straddles Derek.

“How long?” Stiles gasps into Derek’s mouth, nibbling at his bottom lip.

“When you came over for dinner,” Derek rumbles bringing Stiles hips down to grind against Derek’s clothed cock. They rut against each other, getting into a rhythm that’s just too good, but needs far less clothes between then. Stiles grabs the hair at the nape of Derek’s neck, bringing his head back as he runs his mouth along Derek’s jaw and neck. He kisses his way down, not wanting to leave marks but just have the opportunity to run his mouth anywhere on Derek that he can get to.

Derek abruptly stops their grinding and Stiles makes a noise of protest, unlatching from Derek’s neck to lean back to see Derek.

“What?”

“How long for you?” Derek asks, his firm grip not letting Stiles grind down anymore, and it’s frustrating for the both of them, “I know it wasn’t when we first met, or even as long as it was for me.”

“I – last night?” Stiles winces.

“Last night,” Derek repeats man-handing Stiles off of his lap, “so what is this, trying to get in one last fuck before heading off into a war? Why didn’t you just leave when you had the chance then?” Derek gets up off the bed, standing awkwardly at the side of the bed like he doesn’t know where to go or what to do.

“That’s not it,” Stiles sighs, “and I resent you’d think that of me. I mean I was always _sexually_ attracted to you because look at you! That 8 o’clock stubble is unreal and unbelievably sexy but last night when you and Laura were talking when you thought I was unconscious – it was a side of you that wasn’t guarded or gruff, it was real, it was _you_ the full you. That’s when I knew. That’s why I wanted to stay.”

Derek sighs crossing his arms like he’s trying to think.

“I didn’t think anything of it before because I didn’t want to be some conquest for you,” Stiles admits.

“I feel the same,” Derek admits.

“Well then, now that we’ve got all the feelings out of the way…” Stiles trails off waving towards his body and Derek’s.

Derek rolls his eyes but Stiles jumps up on his knees, knee-walking towards Derek on the bed. Derek grabs hold of a chunk of Stiles t-shirt bringing him the last few inches towards him, as he leans down and kisses Stiles. He opens his mouth up slowly, as he lets his hand slip down the front of Stiles sleep pants.

They’re just getting into the groove of things, Stile starting to lean back so he can lie down on the bed when there’s a loud boom, something like an explosion and the ground shaking. They pull apart both looking startled. Stiles is about to ask what’s happened when Derek speaks.

“There’s been an explosion – they blew something up in the village square.”

A few seconds later, confirming Derek’s words Stiles can hear screams from outside.

Looks like the war has begun.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, they can't get it on just yet...


	13. Chapter 13

The imminent threat of a war, the shaking of the ground and the screaming of the village people – it’s definitely a boner killer. Any thought that Stiles had about where he wanted to get his hands on Derek, or where Derek could get his hands on Stiles – vanished into thin air.

Stiles scrambles off of the bed trying to rearrange and change his clothes as Derek does the same. He barely has time to grab his jacket leaving the rest of his belongings in the house as he follows Derek outside into the chaos. There’s a gust of cold wind that hits Stiles in the face the minute he steps outside, a stark contrast to the heat of the house and Derek’s body against him.

He pulls the jacket closer to his body, pulling the hood up over his head to shelter himself from the wind and the billowing snow that’s making it even harder to see that far into the distance let alone in the middle of the night. Even with the whirring noise of the wind they can hear the screams and shouts of the rest of the residents and see the plumes of smoke coming from the village centre. Stiles barely keeps pace with Derek as they run towards the chaos.  

“Oh my God,” Stiles gasps coming to a halt near the gazebo in the centre. He’s staring at the barn that serves as the meeting place and gym – currently set alight, the fire blazing higher and higher as a group of men try and put it out but end up backing away as the fire starts to spread further out.

“Come on,” Derek yells over the shouts of the other people as he grabs Stiles’ forearm. Stiles feels himself being dragged as his mind snaps out of its daze watching the fire expanding before he refocuses and follows after Derek. They make it to the Town Hall in no time where they see Laura standing on the front steps looking more than a little stressed and halfway shifted. Stiles still hasn’t gotten used to that.

“Derek,” Laura commands, “I need you to go the perimeter with Boyd, Erica and Isaac hold them off as long as you can. Take this,” she chucks a walkie-talkie in Derek’s hand.

“What about –” Derek starts. 

“Stiles, I need you to either stay here or get to the Doctor’s office and stay with Scott and help there. Take these.” She hands him a similar walkie-talkie that she gave Derek, but also shoves a gun into his hand. “Have you ever used one?”

Stiles nods his head yes. Funnily enough it wasn’t Stiles’ dad that had taught Stiles how to fire a gun. There was no way his dad would teach him when he was in high school when he could barely focus on his school work let alone fire a gun and not even after he graduated. Stiles didn’t have any desire to enter the police force – so there was never a reason for his father to teach him.

Incidentally enough it was Lydia that had dragged him about a year ago. When he’d asked why on earth they were going to a shooting range she replied why not? So Stiles’ very limited knowledge on guns expanded as he learned how to load, aim and shoot a gun. Of course his targets before weren’t moving, or you know, _alive._

“Shoot anyone that comes at you that you don’t recognise from the village,” Laura instructs, she explains quickly what channel to use on the walkie-talkie in case they need to get a hold of anyone.

“Derek, **go** ,” Laura demands when she sees Derek hesitating to leave, his eyes lingering on Stiles.

“I’ll be fine,” Stiles rolls his eyes trying to play it off, even as he takes a steadying breath.

Derek nods his head not breaking his gaze for a few seconds longer before he cracks his neck, the sound of bones cracking and changing barely heard over the other noises as Derek shifts. Stiles gets one last good look at Derek, transformed – and thankfully doesn’t pass out like last time – before Derek runs off towards the outskirts of the village.

Stiles didn’t even notice that Laura ran off roughly around the same time as Derek until he looks around and realises he’s standing on his own on the Town Hall steps, people running past him. The only logical thing he thinks to do is run off in the direction of the Doctor’s office in search of Scott. Thankfully there are no incidents on his way there; no one shoots an arrow at him, throws a fire bomb at him and no more butt-hurt villagers trying to kill him.

“Scott?” Stiles yells the minute he’s in the doctor’s office, shutting the door behind him to keep the coldness and smoke from coming in. “Scott! Where are you?”

Stiles runs up the familiar stairs and finds Scott in the first open door. He nearly faints at all the blood he sees, _nearly._ He sees Ian laying on a table, his shirt torn and blood seeping out of his stomach. Scott’s hands are just as bloody, splotches of blood on his face from where he must have wiped his hand to get rid of stray hairs falling into his face.

“Hand me those forceps,” Scott instructs glancing up at Stiles.

“The what?”

“Those grabby looking things!” Scott shouts his eyes darting towards the tray full of medical tools.

Stiles hands clambers for the tray as he knocks various tools out of the way to quickly hand Scott the forceps.

“Hold his wound open,” Scott instructs.

Stiles knows he can’t exactly protest – not that he wants to. But all he can think about is blood, blood, blood and shouldn’t he be wearing gloves or something? Logically he knows there’s no time to question or fret over these things when lives are at risk. Ian lets out a loud growl of pain and Stiles snaps out of it.

His large hands replace where Scott was holding Ian’s wounds open as Scott grabs the forceps, hovering over Ian’s wound. Scott looks anything but delicate as the forceps dig into the open wound fishing around for something.

Ian’s eyes turn to a glowing yellow his back arching off of the table as he tries to pull away. One of his clawed hands reaches to grab out as Stiles’ wrist squeezing hard, on the wrong side of pain. Stiles lets out a yelp of pain trying to free his wrist from Ian’s death grip.

“It’s out,” Scott yells and Ian visibly relaxes his hand going lax on Stiles wrist.

Stiles watches as a bullet slug clanks into a small metal bowl covered in Ian’s blood. The next thing he sees is Scott lighting some ashy herb substance on fire and placing it over Ian’s wound, Ian howls out in pain again before it looks like he passes out.

“Is he okay?” Stiles screeches.

“He will be now; he just needs to snap out of it.”

The minute Scott says it Ian gasps sitting up straight like he’s trying to catch his breath. He hands fly to his wound watching as it starts to shut itself as if it never happened.

“Thanks. I need to get back out there,” Ian says hopping off of the table with a spring to his step, no evidence showing that Scott just pried a bullet out of his stomach.

“Are you going to be okay dude?” Stiles says just wanting to get Ian to lie back down on the table and relax for a minute.

“Werewolf,” Ian raises his eyebrow as if to say ‘duh’, “when a human gets hurt they’re out of commission, we need all the people out there we can get.”

Scott yells out be safe before yet another werewolf is coming in injured in one form or another. Stiles gets into the rhythm of helping Scott when a new injured werewolf comes in, handing him certain tools, grabbing bandages and holding even more bloody wounds open.

At random times there are sounds of screaming, yelling and gun shots. There are no more bombs, at least not in the village centre because the ground doesn’t shake as violently as it did earlier in the night and there’s not any more smoke outside than there was before. Stiles could barely see out the window with all the snow and being too preoccupied being a pseudo-doctor to injured werewolves.

There’s an interim of time when no more werewolves come in for a few minutes and Scott runs downstairs to see how his mom is fairing with the humans that are injured – they need all the help they can get. Stiles’ mind wanders to where Derek is and what he’s doing is he okay or is he injured? The only comforting thought he can take is that if he were injured than he would have shown up here – and he hasn’t. Then his mind wanders to what if Derek _is_ hurt but beyond saving and there was no point in bringing him here?

Stiles can’t think about that for too long otherwise he’s going to go out of his mind. It’s all too much too soon and even if he hadn’t just made out with Derek like a highschooler a few hours ago – he’d still be worried. He doesn’t want to see anyone in this village die. Stiles trudges down the stairs to see if he can help Scott and Melissa anymore with the humans.

-

There’s just a _bit_ of peace in the Doctor’s office with only a few human patients with minor burns from the fire at the barn and Stiles is in a little pantry under the staircase grabbing more supplies when it happens.

There’s another loud boom and the ground shaking, seconds later more screaming takes place. Stiles drops the supplies he’d been getting and runs back out into the main room where Scott and Melissa run to as well.

“What’s happening?” Melissa asks.

Scott stands still for a few seconds trying to listen in. “There’s been another explosion,” he says.

‘No shit,’ Stiles thinks – but it’s not the time for sarcasm. He’s more concerned about who’s hurt.

Scott’s about to open his mouth again, say something when smoke starts pushing its way in through the crevices in the door, flowing in from the slit underneath and through the side. Stiles coughs as he pulls up his shirt to cover his mouth and nose to stop from inhaling any more smoke, Melissa following suit. Scott coughs but doesn’t have time to pull his shirt up, he goes into an even bigger fit of coughs before he crumples to the floor clutching his chest.

“Is he okay?!” Stiles yells through his shirt as he drops to his knees on the floor bending over where Scott is still continuing to cough. “Is he asthmatic?”

Melissa is cupping her free hand on her sons cheek trying to get Scott to look at her when Scott breaths out, “wolfs bane,” before he’s in another fit of coughing and wheezing.

“Stiles,” Melissa says sharply, “go back to the medical pantry, and get as many of those surgical face masks you can.”

Stiles doesn’t waste any time in jumping to his feet and grabbing the masks, he puts one on himself like you’re taught to do in an emergency during a flight before handing one to Melissa and Scott. Stiles runs to the patient room where there are a few remaining humans nursing their injuries. He hands them out to them as well making sure they’re on and secure.

“I don’t get it, why is Scott having a coughing fit?” Stiles asks when he returns to the front foyer.

Melissa had gotten Scott up on his feet and was walking him towards another exit farthest away from where most of the smoke was coming from. Stiles slung Scott’s arm around his shoulder and was helping Melissa walk him out of the office.

“Wolfs bane can be deadly to werewolves,” Melissa explains, her voice muffled through the surgical mask. “Just as deadly to humans as well but something with the werewolves system it affects them at a quickened pace.”

They’ve barely gotten Scott dragged to a secluded area under the cover of some trees farthest away from the smoke, Melissa running back inside to get the humans when Stiles hears his walkie-talkie go off. He’d almost forgotten about it until Laura’s voice crackled through.

“Stiles, I need you to get back to the Town Hall ASAP. Grab all the gas masks you can find and make sure the underground safety room where all the kids are in is secured and locked. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

“Got it,” Stiles yells into the speaker. He makes sure all the humans are out of the Doctor’s office and that they and Melissa are safe under the trees before he quickly explains that he has to go back to the Town Hall. Melissa looks sceptical, like she wants to tell Stiles to stay here where it’s safe but instead she says to just be careful.

Even running along the outskirts of the village square is not enough to be away from the smoke, the closer he gets to the Town Hall the more the wolfs bane smoke is condensed, like a thick cloud sitting right at eyelevel. There’s another loud boom – another smoke bomb dropped – and Stile stumbles over his feet falling to the ground his knees hitting the cold snowy and partially icy ground and he can feel the pain radiating. He doesn’t have time to worry about it or think about it too much he has to jump back up on his feet and make it to the Town Hall – before the next smoke bomb hits him.

When Stiles makes it back to the Town Hall scrambling up the steps he’s relieved to see that most of the werewolves that were guarding the Hall already have their gasmasks on and are handing a bunch out to carry out to the other werewolves. Stiles doesn’t know if there’s even enough for everyone but hopes that at least if any don’t have a gas mask can at least find shelter somewhere.

He remembers what Laura told him and runs down to where his basement office would be, but taking a different turn down a hallway where he now knows what hid behind that elusive steel door. It’s a shelter for people and Laura had sent all the kids with Rory and Lane to look after them – make sure they’re safe and not completely freaking out. Stiles runs to the door making sure it’s still shut tight and the bolts are in place – which thankfully they are, so the children are at least safe.

After Stiles has readjusted his mask he’s running back up the steps to the main floor where he finds Laura with Charles handing out masks and instructing where everyone should go and what they should be doing.

“Gerard and his men are pushing their way farther in to our territory. We didn’t see those wolfs bane bombs coming!” Laura shouts through her mask to Stiles.

“Do we have any sort of defence tactic for whatever those bombs are doing to us?”

“Only the masks, I’ve sent someone to get them to everyone at the perimeter but if it’s already in their system they may become infected their systems might start to shut down soon. We need to take them down and soon otherwise it’s all over.”

 “What about the tunnels?” Stiles says all of a sudden perking up straight.

“What tunnels?”

“When I was encrypting!” Stiles explains, “I saw these underground plans for tunnels beneath the village, they lead right out of here don’t they? Can’t we use them to sneak up on Verdun?”

“The tunnels don’t lead to Verdun that doesn’t help,” Laura shakes her head.

“He’s right,” Charles cuts in. “The tunnels lead to that piece of road that’s county property. Not ours and not Verdun’s, from there we should be able to access their tunnels, possibly sneak up on them.”

“Exactly!” Stiles screeches.

“Even if we did get to the county road their tunnels may be rigged, mountain ash might not let us get any farther.”

“Mountain ash?” Stiles asks.

“Then we take Stiles with us, if there is any ash he moves it and then we advance,” Charles instructs.

“I guess it’s our only hope,” Laura nods. She steps a few feet away to talk into her walkie-talkie as Charles calls a group of werewolves to huddle in as he explains the plan.

Stiles gets distracted from listening to Charles when he can hear who Laura is talking to on the walkie-talkie – Derek.

“Derek, we’re advancing through the underground tunnels to get to Verdun. We’re taking Stiles with us,” Laura shouts into the walkie-talkie.

“Give me a second I’ll meet you,” Derek’s voice crackles through.

“No, I need you to stay here and be my eyes and ears.”

“But Stiles –”

“He’ll be fine just try and hold them off as long as you can.”

Laura hands Stiles a proper gas mask to put on as he discards his surgical mask quickly replacing it with the gas mask. Thankfully there haven’t been any other loud booms and grounds shaking so it seems that Gerard has stopped with the smoke bombs for now at least. Laura leads the werewolves Charles had gathered with weapons, one of them being Luke and Stiles out of Town Hall, and around back of the building where she finds a sewer with the grating over it.

One of the werewolves grips the heavy grate and lifts it up throwing it to the side as if it weighs nothing as the werewolves start to jump one-by-one down into the dark hole. Even Charles in all his elderly-ness jumps down as if it’s nothing and all Stiles can think is ‘holy shit I’m going to break my ankle.’

“Jump, someone will catch you,” Laura instructs, “Stiles is jumping down!” She yells into the dark hole and pushes Stiles forward. Stiles doesn’t have any choice but to jump, his eyes closed as he feels his stomach drop out of him and hopes for the best.

Someone _does_ catch him – Luke - but his foot still lands awkwardly on the ground fortunately it doesn’t hurt him too much and he’s still able to walk. He’d have made some silly comment about catching him like a swooning bride or something just to tick Luke off, because it’s so easy – except now is really not the time or place. He’s pushed to the side as he sees Laura and the last werewolf, the one who’d lifted the grate jump down landing on their feet in a crouch perfectly. Show-offs.

They walk down the darkened tunnel and Stiles can barely see two feet ahead of him, his hand running along the wall so he knows where he’s going and doesn’t trip. Werewolves and their fantastic abilities can see perfectly in the dark and therefore didn’t think to bring flashlights. They walk for a few minutes through what feels like a maze taking twists and turns and Stiles would have feared he somehow wandered off in the dark on his own with his lack of vision except he can hear the others walking and murmuring to each other.

The group finally reach a dead end and up above they can see another grate. There’s a rusty old ladder with a few steps missing that lead up to the top, Luke takes the steps first and lifts the grate up and over as he climbs up back onto solid earth. He helps everyone – mostly hoisting Stiles up before recovering the grate. They walk a few more meters before they’re jumping _down_ again back underground this time on Verdun’s property. Stiles has learnt by now how to jump properly and this time when Luke catches him with a grunt, he doesn’t land awkwardly on his feet.

“Mountain ash,” Laura growls when she tries to walk forward but is almost propelled backwards. She tries again like it’ll make a difference but the same thing happens again. “Stiles break the seal. Just push the ash away.”

Stiles doesn’t see how that’s going to help any but he looks down at the black ashy looking substance and pushes it away with his hand. It doesn’t feel any different, doesn’t look very weird but this time when Laura tries to step forward she isn’t push backwards. ‘huh,’ Stiles thinks – he’s definitely curious about _that_ and wishes he had some of that when he was in college and his first ever roommate didn’t know boundaries. If only it worked on humans too.

By the time they finally got to the end of the tunnel and up through the last grating, finally on solid ground once again – they’re in Verdun. Stiles doesn’t remember this area, he’d only been on the main road that held Argent’s Tavern. The group stealthily follow the sound of voices – or rather the werewolves were stealthy while Stiles’ boots were crunching on the falling snow and trying not to fall.

Laura makes some aborted hand movements that Stiles doesn’t even understand but he sees the other werewolves split up into mini groups as they keep moving forwards – like some sort of army. Stiles keeps his distance walking behind the group because he’s not about to walk into enemy territory on the front lines – his jacket may be puffy but it ain’t no bulletproof vest.

Stiles should have known better. Not to walk in the back by himself, instead he should have walked in the middle with the werewolves as a sort of circular shield. Instead, now he’s feeling something hard - probably a 4x4 piece of wood - connecting to his side and back as he crumples to the ground.

“Filth,” a woman spits and Stiles suddenly remembers her as the woman at Argent’s Tavern, the one with red dishevelled hair who was drunk out of her mind. If she’s drunk now, her drunken aim is fan-fucking-tastic.  

“What the hell man,” Stiles whines even as his face is still in the snow some melting in his mouth the front of his jeans and jacket completely soaked through.

Before she even has time to lift the gun slung around her shoulder, Luke pounces on her breaking her right arm – the loud crack clearly audible along with her screams of pain before Luke snaps her neck effectively cutting off her shouts. Stiles watches as her body slouches to the ground, blood dripping out of her throat. Luke turns around and everywhere around his mouth is covered red – the woman’s blood – and Stiles’ stomach goes a little queasy. Than he remembers Luke did just save his life so that’s _something._ He mutters thanks while Luke just gives him a blank look before he helps Stiles up.

Stiles’ knee and sides start to hurt the more he focuses on it as he limps behind the group, this time Luke walking behind him to make sure he’s safe. The pack make it to the main street where there are a group of men and woman scattered about talking with a few children. It seems like Verdun residents felt they didn’t need to hide like Laura had the children do back in Wulfstan – they were over confident.

“Chris, it’s over,” Laura shouts holding up her gun as they step on to the main road.

The Verdun residents all stop and wheel around to where the voice is coming from, some holding up their weapons, parents moving their children behind them to protect them. Chris is standing there without a weapon in hand, crossing his arms.

“Hold it,” Chris commands and the residents don’t pull the trigger on their weapons, or advance but they don’t lower them either.

“Call Gerard off.”

“I think you’ll realise that I hardly have any control over my father.”

“That’s your excuse?” Laura snorts her eye glow red when Chris just shrugs his shoulders.

They stare at each other for a few more minutes, some of the Verdun people getting restless their eyes darting between the werewolves. Laura slowly moves her hand to grab the walkie-talkie from her pocket as she talks into it.

“Derek, find Gerard I’m sure he’s around there somewhere. Tell him we’ve invaded Verdun.”

Derek’s voice crackles through the speaker, “he heard you.”

“How did you like my wolfs bane bombs?” Laura hears Gerard’s distinct, grating voice come through the speaker. Derek must be holding the speak button for Gerard to be able to talk.

“Might have been a bit too pre-emptive considering I managed to invade Verdun. Back off or I won’t hesitate to kill,” Laura answers.

“A bunch of weak woman and children? Is that really your style?”

“You want to test me?” Laura snarls.

There’s a humourless laugh on the other end of the walkie-talkie that makes Stiles shiver and not from the snowy winter night.

“They’ll die martyrs when at the end of it all your whole village, full of filthy creatures are dead.”

“Even your own son?”

Laura steps closer to where Chris is standing and there’s an echo of clicks from the Verdun residents aiming their guns ready to fire. Chris doesn’t step back but still raises his hand to stop them from shooting – standing his ground.

“Especially my own son and my daughter. I should thank you for that dear Laura. Kate ruined the whole plan, she was supposed to stick around and ‘comfort’ Derek,” Gerard spits out the word comfort as if it sickens him, “and then we were supposed to attack wipe out the rest of your pathetic village, the oldest most well-known Hale pack right then. But she was weak, whether she felt bad or couldn’t stomach it and left. You cleaned up my mess Laura.”

There’s an impregnable silence and when Gerard realises that Laura isn’t going to say anything, he continues on.

“I couldn’t risk Kate having some sort of moral breakdown and blabbing her mouth to someone. I fully intended to hunt her down and get rid of her myself. I should have known a killer monster like yourself would do it, it’s in your nature isn’t it?”

Laura can’t believe what she’s hearing – that Gerard would kill his own daughter, his own townspeople just to get rid of werewolves. Not even all werewolves, but only a village of them. What surprises Laura even more is the look of horror and shock that crosses Chris’ face – he wasn’t aware of what happened, or was only fed half of the story. The side that suited Gerard more than it did Wulfstan.

“Derek?” Laura talks into the walkie-talkie.

“Yeah?”

“Kill him.”

Laura watches ever so perceptively to see any sort of anger radiating from Chris – she doesn’t see anything. Some of the other residents gasp but Chris nods his head ever so slightly, looking at them until they lower their weapons.

There’s shots and muffled groans over Derek’s side of the walkie-talkie and then it goes dead – radio silence.

 

 

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

“Derek?” Laura calls into the walkie-talkie, there’s no answer.

“Derek?” Stiles whispers into his walkie-talkie. Just because the line went dead doesn’t mean it’s a good sign. Derek may be the one that’s injured, not Gerard.

Stiles starts to panic, his heart rate speeding up and it feels like his chest is tightening, closing in around him. Any pain he felt, from his head, his sides disappear when the only thing he can think about is Derek. If Derek’s hurt and Gerard isn’t dead (Stiles doesn’t stop long enough to think too in depth about that – his morals and ethics seem to have long since vanished) which means that he may be attacking the rest of the village. Stiles’ mind wanders to Scott and Melissa, Isaac, Boyd even Erica.

He feels a firm grip on his shoulder, anchoring him to the present time and not let his mind wander. It’s Luke.

“’m here,” Derek’s voice cackles through the speaker and Stiles sags in relief against Luke. Luke doesn’t even grunt or complain just lets Stiles leans on him, supporting him. He sees Laura, in front of him is relieved as well but she doesn’t have the luxury of sagging against anyone, or have anyone support her – she’s still got her gun pointed at the Verdun people.

“You can leave now,” Chris speaks rather dryly his hand still crossed over his chest.

There are a few protests from some of the people behind him, some of his residents and neighbours but he shoots them a glance that screams ‘don’t fuck with me, not now,’ before he looks back at Laura.

“I didn’t know about Gerard’s plans, what he planned to do to my sister,” Chris’ eyes harden at that, angry, “I didn’t know what _you_ did to my sister. But I also didn’t know what Kate did. I’ve had every intention of agreeing and living to the treaty that was signed all those years ago.”

“And now?” Laura questions.

“If you’re asking if I plan on attacking your village anytime soon, I’m not,” Chris cracks, “you have your village and people to attend to, and I have my own town and people to attend to. Let my people come back unharmed and for now we’ll go on as the previous treaty was signed until we’re able to come to an agreement.”

“Let’s go,” Laura nods her head towards the other werewolves and Stiles. She turns around to walk away, the other werewolves not turning their backs, watching the Verdun people as if they expect them to start shooting, raining down bullets at any minute.

“Oh and Hale?” Chris calls, Laura turns around before he speaks again, “My daughter and that McCall kid is not happening.”

Laura actually snorts, surprised that she can even find any sort of humour in any of this, “easier said than done.”

-

The group don’t have to walk back through any more tunnels, taking twists and turns in the dampness of the underground. It’s starting to get lighter outside now, dawn is soon arriving and Stiles can’t even remember when he last slept. He doesn’t really pay attention but he can hear the rest of the pack, mainly Laura talking about how they can hear the Verdun residents trekking back through the woods to their property. They take a different route so their paths don’t cross.

Although the Verdun residents are going back to their town in defeat, it doesn’t mean they’re not on edge and blame Wulfstan for the death of Gerard. Even though Chris is presumably the new leader of Verdun, he may not have had time to talk to them, explain everything or however he plans to handle the situation. The last thing they need is a mini-war on their hands in the middle of the forest, when it’s supposed to be over, done and dusted with.

“Oh my God,” Stiles breaths when he steps back into Wulfstan, and he feels as if he’s coming home. It should be a scary though, that he loves this place so much after growing up in Beacon Hills, surrounded by his friends and family. But now Wulfstan has become his home and family, not pseudo-family or home.  “It looks like an actual war zone.”

The barn fire is out but it’s charred black, little gold embers still flying around in the smoke from the fire. It smells like burning wood and varnish, not the relaxing smell of a fire burning in the fireplace. Windows of various stores are broken, lamp posts knocked over, benches broken in half or threatening to wobble over at any minute. There’s a large gaping hole on the floor in the middle of the gazebo at the centre of the village. Somehow, there’s even a car rammed right through the window at the diner, the ‘Luke’s Diner’ sign unhinged from where it used to be, swinging back and forth.

“Dammit,” Luke mutters angrily when he sees his establishment, taking in the rest of the town, “we should have attacked first, been on the offence,” he says to no one in particular.

“Not now,” Laura sighs, “we can’t get down each other’s throats, now is the time we’re supposed to be working together.”

Stiles doesn’t listen to the rest of Laura’s speech, he finds himself wandering in the direction of the doctor’s office. He doesn’t know where Derek is, hopes he’s there – but he’s not going to start running around the village screaming Derek’s name as much as he might want to.

He walks into the doctor’s office and it’s not as busy as he thought it would, he thought there’d be more people rushing about, tending to people to patch them all up but he supposes it’s a good sign that there’s aren’t many people, maybe that means everyone is okay, or going to be okay.

He sees Melissa look up from where she’s just emerged from the supply closet carrying a bunch of medical supplies and she visibly sighs, her eyes lighting up.

“Stiles sweetie, thank God! Are you okay? You look a little pale; let me take a look at you.”

“I’m fine,” Stiles mumbles waving his hand in the air, “I need to find Derek.”

“Stiles,” Melissa warns.

“I need to find Derek.”

“And what good will that do if you crumple over from your injuries?” Melissa reprimands grabbing Stiles by the scruff of his shirt as he tries to walk past her and up the stairs. She leads him through an open door and makes him sit on the examination table.

Once she examines his head and is satisfied that there aren’t any serious injuries, Melissa tells him that she’s going to lift up his shirt to look at his injuries. Stiles looks down at where his stomach and chest is not exposed and is startled by the reddish-blue bruises that are scattered over his side. He’d felt a constant pain in his side but didn’t think there were any bruises, let alone that large of one.

“I need to check for internal bleeding,” Melissa informs him as her gloved hands gingerly touch his stomach, she presses down and Stiles winces in pain but she continues to do so. She asks him if he’s feeling weak, light-headed or if he’s thrown up. Stiles answers truthfully, that he’s tired but he doesn’t think it has anything to do with the injury as much as it has to do with his lack of sleep.

Melissa nods her head brining Stiles’ shirt back down to cover his bruises, she explains that if he vomits and sees blood, or if he pees and sees blood to come back quickly but other than that she thinks he’ll be fine and that there’s no internal bleeding.

“I know I can’t convince you to go home and get the rest you need,” Melissa sighs, “Derek should be upstairs.”

Stiles nods his head eagerly saying thanks and brings Melissa into a hug before he hops off the examination table and heading towards the stairs as fast as his legs will let him.

-

“I said I’m fine,” Derek grumbles to someone.

It doesn’t take Stiles long to follow that voice before he finds Derek lying down on a cool, metal table. He doesn’t bother to knock or announce himself, just barges in and gasps when he sees Derek’s injuries. His shirt is ripped into tatters, barely clinging to his body, there’s blood all over his chest, his hands, even his pants. There’s no way to tell whether it’s his owns or someone else’s. He also looks as pale as a ghost; the only colour is his greenish hazel eyes.

 “Oh no you don’t,” Scott reprimands in the same way his mother did – like mother, like son. “I need to check your injuries and make sure you don’t have aconite poisoning. Stiles have you gotten looked at? If not, out!”

“I have,” Stiles nods his head as he walks over to where Derek’s laying, “you okay?” He can’t help but reach his hand out to touch Derek – but he doesn’t know where to put his hand, there’s just so much blood everywhere. He goes for Derek’s shoulder first, before he settles on Derek’s hand, who cares about the blood?

“Are you?” Derek counters taking Stiles’ hand in his own, his eyes tracking over Stiles as if he’s taking inventory. Stiles half expects Derek to start counting his fingers and toes. “What happened to your wrist?” Derek growls, trying to sit up only to be pushed back down by Scott.

“Oh, this?” Stiles says looking at his wrist, he’d completely forgotten about that. There’s a hand shaped red bruise wrapping around his wrist, he’d forgotten it was even there the pain hardly registering compared to his other injuries, “it was from Ian,” Derek lets out yet another growl but Stiles talks over him, “it was from when I was helping Scott, Ian got shot with a bullet with that magical werewolf drug, whatever the fuck that stuff is. But he didn’t mean to do it.”

Stiles stands there in silence as Derek lays on the table as Scott looks over him, content in just being near each other. Scott finally snaps the gloves off of his hand and tells Derek he’s free to go. Not that he needs to be told twice because he’s up and off the table in seconds ready to bolt out of the door. Stiles has to scramble after him.

“Are you going to go find Laura?” Stiles asks following him down the stairs.

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Do you want to come back to mine and rest for a bit?” and Stiles really _does_ mean rest because there’s no way he’s up for any sort of action at the minute as much as he might entertain the idea.

“No.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Listen I just need to clear my head for a minute,” Derek stops and sighs, not making any sort of eye contact at Stiles, he barely even looks in his direction. “You could have gotten hurt,” Derek mutters almost too quietly.

Stiles snorts before he can stop himself and Derek finally snaps his gaze towards Stiles. “It’s a little late to have this sort of realisation dawn on you Derek. It’s over now, you’re fine, and I’m fine.”

“Go home Stiles,” Derek sighs, “and get some rest.”

Stiles is about to object, reach out for Derek to stop him but Derek’s too fast and he’s running off in the direction of the village centre. Stiles may be pissed, but he’s also tired and in no mood to go traipsing around the village to find Derek, to only feel like he’s talking to a brick wall. Instead he heads back in the direction of his house, shedding out of his clothes, ignores the bruises on his body and crashes in bed. If anyone wants to find him, they won’t have to look very far – but they may have trouble trying to wake him.

-

The next time Stiles wakes up it’s after 3 in the afternoon and although he feels even more exhausted than before he can’t fall asleep again. He tosses around in his bed for a few minutes before he throws the covers off.

He turns the shower on, making sure it’s not too hot, tentatively stepping into the tub and washing his body, his hands careful over the bruises getting rid of any sweat and dirt lingering on his body. After his shower he strips the bed sheets even though it’ll get rid of the faint traces of Derek and shoves it in the washing machine before he dresses and is out the door.

There are people milling about in the centre, picking up pieces of garbage, shards of glass and other broken remnants and throwing them in a garbage bag. There’s a table set up near the gazebo with Luke behind it, a large coffee urn – the one he used at the Christmas party – set up as he hands out coffee and other snacks to the people cleaning up.

Stiles predictably finds Laura near the Town Hall, Boyd of course right at her side.

“Where’s Derek?” he asks.

“Somewhere around helping out,” Laura looks like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t expand.

“Oh. Well what can I do to help?” Stiles offers.

Boyd hands Stiles a black garbage bag and a pair of gloves, Stiles takes them putting on the latex gloves.

“You can help with the trash pickup,” Laura instructs, “Scott should be somewhere around here if you want to find him.”

“Got it,” Stiles nods as he walks off in any direction his eyes scanning for Scott. “Hey,” Stiles stops after he’s taken a few steps turning around to face Laura, “how is everyone? Were there any uh, casualties?”

“All of our people are fine and the only Verdun body was Gerard. Mostly everyone is just scraped and bruised,” Laura answers. Stiles nods his head and leaves.  

Once he does find Scott, he doesn’t know how many hours they spend outside, freezing cold with only the smell of Luke’s coffee that’s any comfort as they help clean up. They don’t talk about anything of importance, just little bits to keep themselves entertained.

Stiles tries but fails not to let his eyes scan over the village square looking for Derek. He doesn’t see him anywhere in sight despite seeing most of the other residents.

-

Over the next few days Stiles still hasn’t heard from Derek, but he has seen him. In the days after the fight Laura has organized and ordered everything so that they can start to rebuild the broken parts of the village. New wood is ordered to fix up the barn, benches and gazebo flooring, sheets of glass for Luke’s diner, new lamp posts for the streets, and a bucket load of tools.

She groups everyone together, some to fix one thing or another, while some of the people that work at the school including Erica try and keep the kids entertained in the school by trying to get them back into their regular routine. Which is made up of lots of grumbles about having to go to school and having homework. Laura reminds the village that the sooner they get back into a normal routine the sooner everyone will stop being on edge.

“All I’m saying,” Stiles grumbles as he has a pair or work gloves on attempting to help lift the large sheet of glass with Scott, Luke and Kirk by his side, “is that Derek has been AWOL. I mean I get the village is in shambles and our relationship or lack thereof isn’t of the utmost importance but to completely avoid me is fucked.”

“To the left,” Luke barks as the whole group move the sheet of glass to the left as they try and slot the window into its rightful place. They’ve managed to move the car that crashed through the window, towing it to Gypsy’s. Right, Luke is the last person that wants to overhear any village gossip – he despises it all. But between all the work being done and how exhausted Stiles has been, he hasn’t had much time to see Scott.

“I hardly need to point out that Derek isn’t Mr Forthcoming,” Scott reminds Stiles.

“You’re right,” Stiles laughs, “have you spoken to Allison?” Stiles whispers to try and change the topic.

Scott grimace, shoos Stiles a few feet down as he picks up a broom and hands another to Stiles. They start to brush the sidewalk which doesn’t do much other than move the snow about making even more of a mess – but it makes them look busy at least.

“No, I haven’t tried calling or texting her though, and she hasn’t contacted me.”

“Well between the two of us, one of us needs to be happy and you’ve known Allison longer than I’ve known Derek so if you guys can’t make it work then all hope is abandoned.”

“You don’t come from a family of hunters,” Scott huffs pushing the broom onto Stiles’ boots as a joke, “and it doesn’t work like that, does it?”

“No, it really doesn’t,” Stiles sighs. He looks up from where he’d been pushing snow back and forth, across to the gazebo and he can see Derek. Derek’s looking at him, a hammer in hand before he looks away and starts to pound at a piece of wood in front of him, a little harder than probably strictly necessary.

Stiles props the broom up against the side of Luke’s Diner, taking one step off of the sidewalk and onto the road towards the gazebo when he sees Derek hand a piece of wood to one of the other guys and stalks off in the complete opposite direction of Stiles. So much for talking.

-

Stiles ends up seeing and talking to just about every other villager besides Derek. Luke’s diner has reopened for business and although things are still being rebuilt things are getting back to some sort of normalcy. People are crowding around the tables again, ordering coffee and pies and trying to move on. The rest of the gang are usually in the Diner, Isaac, Boyd, Erica, Scott, Rory and Lane – but never Derek.

Every time Stiles steps into the diner his eyes scan the whole room, trying to see if maybe Derek’s huddled in a corner by himself, but he’s never there. The stupid thing about werewolf heightened senses is it makes it easier for Derek to hide or avoid Stiles, while Stiles flails about the village looking for him. The only thing stopping him from banging on the Hale house is he doesn’t want to disturb Laura – she has enough to deal with, without having to deal with her younger brother’s drama (again).

Stiles refuses to have some sort of inferiority complex, to second guess himself if Derek really does like him – he knows Derek does. He said as much in so many words the night the war started and Stiles _know_ it wasn’t some sort of ‘I may die, let’s bone it out’ confession. It was an honest to God ‘I like you’ confession, no matter how begrudging it was for either of them to admit it.

So no, Stiles refuses to wallow and slip back into old habits where he doesn’t think he’s good enough. He likes Derek, he’s good enough for Derek just as Derek is good enough for him, and he fucking stuck around to fight a god damn war (albeit a short one) – if that doesn’t scream dedication, Stiles doesn’t know what does, short of a tattoo of course.

-

Stiles is in bed once again stalking his old friends Facebook pages and clicking through old photos late one night when he can’t fall asleep. He doesn’t do it to inflict pain on himself or anything, just out of plain curiosity. Before he knows it he’s scrolling through old photos on his own page and can’t help but smile when he sees photos of him and his dad.

There are older ones from his high school graduation, Stiles with his cap and gown on with that lopsided goofy grin, with his dad in his Sheriff’s uniform with an arm around Stiles with a huge smile like the proud father he is. There’s more from Stiles’ university graduation, much with the similar pose.

He clicks through to another album that’s of him and his father on a camping trip (the one and only time they did that), the tent in the background as Stiles tries and fails miserably to start the campfire. He can even remember hearing his dads laugh as Stiles muttered, swore and managed to burn his finger in the process. He remembers mentioning it to his father, taking off a few days from work so they could go. He remembers it was after a particular hard case for his father involving one drug gang or another that led to a shoot-out. It had made headlines in the Beacon Hills newspapers and surrounding towns – because since when was little old sleepy Beacon Hills known for drug gangs?

The rivalry turned into a shootout on the main street of Beacon Hills and Stiles’ father ended up having to shoot one of the gang members who refused to put his weapon down, flailing his gun about like he was going to shoot. The gang member died instantly, falling to the ground in front of dozens of onlookers who didn’t know better than to get the hell away from the danger. Stiles had even been there, home for the weekend from university. Blood had started pouring out of his body, the rest of the gang members were arrested, the deceased one put into a body bag and taken to the coroner’s office.

Despite Stiles’ father being the sheriff, it didn’t mean that he fired his gun at men every other day. He didn’t live in a big city like New York or LA; they hardly had much use to shoot their guns, only dealing with petty crimes, some murders but no shootouts. Until that one afternoon. It had hit Stiles’ father rather hard, he had to give his statement, go through a review of what happened to make sure it was all up to standard practice – but at home he was depressed, feeling down on himself, going on about how there had to have been another way.

Stiles had tried to reassure his father that he did the right thing, had the sheriff not shot the gunmen then he could have fired his gun and shot an innocent bystander, hell he could have shot Stiles. That’s when Stiles convinced his dad to go on the camping trip, it eventually helped bring him out of his funk and return to work, back to the sheriff’s office.

He sits up with a jolt, his laptop tumbling off of his stomach where it was resting, now lopsided on the bed when it hits him. How could it have taken Stiles so long to figure out? He looks at the clock, sees its past 1am but he doesn’t care. He pulls on a pair of track pants over his boxers, throws a sweater on and is out the door running towards the Hale house.

-

He stumbles up the steps to the Hale house and starts to bang on the door. He doesn’t see any visible lights on, on the main floor or upstairs.

“Derek,” he knocks, “c’mon I know you’re in there,” he bangs on the door that little bit harder.

The door flies open to reveal one very angry looking Laura in a sleep dress with a robe on. Her eyes flash red and Stiles takes a tentative step back, he should have thought his plan through. Derek does live with his sister after all.

“It’s 1:30 in the morning Stiles,” she growls.

“I need to talk to him,” Stiles hesitates, “he’s been avoiding me. Has he been avoiding me because _he_ wants to or was he persuaded by someone else?” Stiles folds his arms over his chest to look at Laura. He knows Laura probably only has to flash her eyes again, step a foot forwards and it would be enough to intimidate Stiles. He knows Laura was sceptical about Stiles, about Stiles and Derek. But considering everything that could have gone wrong has already gone wrong, well.

“It’s your head,” she sighs stepping to the side to let Stiles in. Once Stiles is in, stomping the snow off his boots and taking them off, she shuts the door and heads back upstairs.

Stiles doesn’t actually even know where Derek’s room is; only ever been on the main floor. But Laura waves her hand at a closed door and continues on down the hallway shutting her own door with a bang.

“I’m coming in,” Stiles knocks on the door once before he turns the doorknob. He’s amazed that the door doesn’t slam back right in his face like the high schooler that Derek’s been acting like lately, but at least Stiles knows why.

He walks in, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, the only light illuminating the room is the moon. He sees a lump on the bed, with the covers pulled right over Derek’s head. That is _not_ enough to get Stiles to leave.

“Go away,” he hears Derek mutter from under the covers.

That isn’t enough to get Stiles to leave either.

“So, you’re pretty lucky that I’m not stupid or self-deprecating enough to think that you avoiding me is about me, and not you,” Stiles speaks over Derek as he wanders around Derek’s room, his hands tracing over things, the wardrobe, a picture frame, the tarot cards Stiles bought him. Stiles can’t help but smile at that, as he picks up the cards turning them over in his hands.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Gerard.”

Derek throws the covers off of himself to sit up, looking at Stiles; his eyes flash their light blue before returning to their normal colour.

“Now _you_ really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Derek growls.

Stiles shrugs, leans against the dresser putting the cards back exactly where he found them.

“I’m a cop’s kid.”

“So?”

“So,” Stiles drawls out, “I’m a cop’s kid from a small town, clearly not as small as Wulfstan, but you know. Anyway, not a lot of high crime happens in Beacon Hills, so when an officer has to kill someone, it leaves an impact, a pretty lasting impression.”

Derek blinks at him, not daring to move the only other movement is him flexing his toes, not daring to say anything.

“That was your first time killing someone Derek,” Stiles sighs and it’s not a question.

“I’m a werewolf.”

“Hear me roar,” Stiles mutters before he pushes himself off of the dresser and walks towards Derek’s bed. He sits at the end and it’s a small blessing that Derek doesn’t growl or tell him to move. “To my knowledge,” Stiles continues, “wolves don’t hunt unless necessary, like for food, not just for sport.”

“We’re not-”

“Now, you’re going to tell me you’re not an actual wolf,” Stiles cuts over Derek trying to speak, “but go with me here, considering a few weeks ago I thought this shit was just make believe. What were the alternatives here? Call the police, because sure they won’t throw all of Wulfstan, myself included into a psych ward when you start blabbing about werewolves, not to mention you wouldn’t reveal the village secret. Let Gerard live and somehow he still manages to call the shots?”

Derek doesn’t answer him, just swallows his Adam’s apple bobbing. Stiles sighs and rests his hand on Derek’s ankle, running his fingers through Derek’s leg hair for nothing other than a distraction. Although it seems to work because Derek visibly sighs, leaning back against the headboard.

“My father killed someone,” Stiles tells him as he goes on to retell the story to Derek about the drug gangs.

“Your father is the sheriff through,” Derek tells him, “was the sheriff, sorry,” he corrects himself.

“It’s okay,” Stiles assure Derek, “and it’s not like you guys even have a police station here, right? So you guys are basically self-policed same thing, right? It was a matter of kill or be killed and not just you, you big oaf of a martyr but everyone else in the village. Erica, all the kids, Isaac, need I go on?”

“It doesn’t freak you out, what I did?” Derek asks looking at Stiles with such large, innocent eyes that Stiles’ heart clenches a little. His hand tightens on Derek’s ankle, “it should.”

“Initially yeah,” Stiles admits, “not the you killing part, just the concept of killing and how Laura seemed to talk about it with such ease. But hearing it and living it are two completely different things. When it came down to it, when I saw the fire, those bombs, it all changed. The only concern I had was to survive, and if that means to kill, then so be it.”

Derek closes his eyes, letting his head thump against the headboard as he takes slow, even breaths. Stiles crawls up the bed to sit beside Derek, his hand patting on Derek’s thigh.

“Hey, you believe me don’t you?” Stiles asks.

“Yes,” Derek answers not opening his eyes but his large hand covers over where Stiles’ hand is on his thigh giving it a squeeze.

“Good, now can we pass out, please?” Stiles asks wiggling out of his track pants and chucking them on the floor. Derek’s eyes suddenly fly open at the movement, to watch Stiles undress. He watches as Stiles lifts the sweater over his head.

Stiles can hear Derek gasp, when the sweater is over his head and he drops it on the floor. Derek’s seen the bruises.

Derek’s hand reaches around to cup Stiles’ face, so that they’re facing each other. He leans forward, opening his mouth to kiss Stiles. Stiles can feel Derek’s hand brushing against Stiles’ cheek as Stiles opens his mouth in return. He groans and Derek is suddenly pulling Stiles down so he’s on his back, as Derek hovers over him. His mouth is back on Stiles like he can’t bear to break any sort of contact.

He runs his mouth across Stiles’ cheek, up to his earlobe as he nibbles on it and Stiles can’t help but let out a full out groan. Derek continues his path, running his mouth down Stiles’ jaw, nipping as he goes. He feels Stiles’ hand snake into his hair and before he knows it, Derek’s on his back and Stiles is on top, straddling Derek’s thighs.

Derek lets out a huff, because hey werewolf strength and he’s at the disadvantage. Stiles settles himself on Derek’s thighs, just content to look at Derek.

Derek can’t help but let his eyes track down to the bruises across Stiles’ sides and stomach; they’re turning that ugly black-ish blue. He gingerly runs his fingers across the bruises careful not to prod or poke, just to feel. He runs his hands up Stiles’ chest, touching like he’s making sure Stiles is all in one piece, not a figment of his imagination about to disappear. He takes Stiles’ hand to look at the bruise wrapped around his wrist, turning his hand over and over, looking.

“They’re just bruises,” Stiles shrugs on top of him, “they’ll fade.”

And they will, they’ll fade, cease to exist anymore and in a few weeks or months Stiles will forget they’ve ever been there. The pain he felt when he got them, when he moves to stretch or walk will be a distant memory. But the bruises Derek carry the bruises that aren’t visible – those are the ones that hurt the most. Those are the ones that never heal, they’re the kind that you can’t see, can’t poke to feel the physical pain. Instead it’s emotional pain, something that never really fades or leaves.

Stiles leans forwards, kisses Derek’s forehead, runs his mouth down and kisses the tip of Derek’s nose, farther down to peck at his lips. He continues his path down, kissing every part that his mouth can reach, his neck, his pecks, his sternum, his stomach, and his hips. It’s not about sex, it’s not about who can reach their orgasm first, who can please who the most. It’s about showing that you care, that you understand without having to speak any words. His hands run across the same path that his mouth wanders and he can feel Derek shaking beneath him, feel his startled, ragged breaths, the way his abs shake, his legs shake like he’s trying not to fall apart completely.

Stiles wants to show Derek that it’s okay, it’s okay to fall apart because Stiles will be there to put the pieces back together, will always be there to put the pieces back together.

Derek thinks that maybe Stiles was a necessary evil, the kind that doesn’t want information for subterfuge – not like, her. The kind of evil that brings out all his insecurities and fears but not to laugh or mock but to show that it’s okay, it’s acceptable and normal. The kind that makes you reopen old wounds, pry the stiches apart so that you can learn from your mistakes, move on. Move on without being held back like a ship moored, anchor dropped.

Stiles settles back on his side of the bed lying on his side as he rearranges Derek so that Derek is the little spoon the curve of his ass fitting perfectly with Stiles’ groin, their legs tangled together. His hand runs up and down Derek’s bare chest, soothing.

“You’re not just a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Stiles whispers against the back of Derek’s neck as they fall asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm obviously not a doctor so as far as the whole internal bleeding part, if that's incorrect, oopsies.  
> tumblr; foughtthewolvesofpatience.tumblr.com/


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so lame for taking forever to update, but I had three friends visit from overseas at different times this past month, then I got tonsillitis and did not feel like doing anything!

The next time there’s a village meeting in the newly rebuilt barn, Stiles is actually invited. There’s no pretence of talking “finances” as Laura put it last time, this time they speak openly about werewolves, the war, rebuilding the village and of course the Argents.

Stiles sits beside Scott as Derek stands next to Laura at the front on the little podium as they move through the agenda. Stiles sees Scott stiffen when the Argent topic is brought up, specifically Chris and his daughter, Allison, and whether or not they’re suitable and trustable leaders of Verdun. The general census is no, they are not at all suitable – mainly because no one of Wulfstan trusts him – expect Laura who begrudgingly says she’s doing everything she can to work on a new treaty. Charles and Derek solemnly nod their head in agreement.

Stiles slaps Scott on the back giving him a reassuring pat. Looks are shot in their direction throughout the barn as they side-glance or full on stare at Stiles and Scott as if they’re the reason everything happened, the reason so many got injured and the village almost falling to shambles. Scott ducks his head staring at his hands as if they’re the most fascinating body part in the world, while Stiles returns their glares with a look that could seriously injure – because no one messes with his boy Scott. Stiles is pretty sure he even sees Derek smirk a little when they make eye contact.

The meeting ends with Laura declaring that she has yet to talk to Chris Argent about the future but that she is positive that there won’t be any more attacks and in time, everything will go back to what it used to be.

-

Stiles gave a slap to Derek’s ass after the village meeting saying he’d see him later but right now it was ‘bro time’ with Scott. It probably also had to do with the fact that if they spent any amount of time together their dicks would fall off, not because of lack of use, the complete opposite.

It’s been a little over two weeks since everything happened and Stiles and Derek have been inseparable. It was more to do with Stiles hovering by Derek, his hand on his arm, shoulder, back anywhere that could maintain some sort of decent contact when they were out in public.

He knows that it took a lot for Derek to open up to him, not with words Stiles knows that may take a while or may never happen, but he doesn’t need the words. Not about Derek’s past at least, everyone is entitled to their secrets. He knows Derek opened up to him, by letting Stiles show him that he cares for him that night they talked about Derek having never killed before. He knows Derek opened up by not being stoic trying to hide his feeling or emotions they were clear as day on his face, even that late at night in the dark.

Stiles took Derek out on a date a few days after that night. Derek rolled his eyes when Stiles showed up at the door, dressed smartly in a pair of fitted slacks, a white button up and of course his puffy winter jacket to keep him warm. Derek had been dressed in a pair of jeans and a Henley, one look from Laura who just happened to be hovering by the door told Derek he had to change immediately. Yeah right as if she hadn’t planned to be at the door.

Their date was at the fanciest place Wulfstan had to offer, Riley’s. Riley’s was a ‘ma and pa’ restaurant that looked like it was located on the first floor of a house, tables in different parts of the various rooms to give the sense of intimacy while still being open concept. The tables had the patented red and white checked table cloths, with a single burning candle in the middle – which they blew out almost immediately; they didn’t need the image of a flame flickering between them.

The food was delicious but the dessert and coffee was less than subpar and all Stiles could complain about was how he was craving Luke’s coffee and a slice of apple pie. It didn’t take much convincing on Stiles’ part as he slapped down some bills on the table and was dragging Derek out to Luke’s. Which effectively put an end to their ‘romantic date,’ because within minutes of grabbing a table in the corner beside the window only room enough for two, trying to be inconspicuous did Isaac and Boyd grab some chairs and push their table up against Stiles’ and Derek’s. Boyd at least had the audacity to look a bit sheepish about pulling his chair up when Erica yanked him over.

Stiles didn’t seem to mind once a cup of coffee was waved under his nose and a giant slice of apple pie in front of him. Derek had that put out look on his face which turned into a death stare pointed in Isaac’s direction when Stiles got a good chunk of gooey apple pie on his fork and waved it in Derek’s direction until he obligingly opened his mouth – all the while Isaac laughing.

The minute he opened his mouth and Stiles went to put the fork in his mouth, Derek had to suppress the grunt threatening to turn into a moan when he felt Stiles’ boot pushing their way in-between Derek’s feet, rubbing their way up. It wasn’t in any way sexy, well it shouldn’t have been. Stiles was still in winter boots, wet from the snow which only caused Derek’s pant legs to get wet, but just the knowledge that Stiles was toying with him while his best friends were sitting at the table, well.

Derek clamped his mouth around the fork, eating the apple pie as he eyed Stiles suspiciously – letting him know he was on to him. He swept his tongue out to catch the apple crumble topping and it was Stiles’ turn to hold back a moan. Erica double-overed in laughter which finally snapped the two men back to reality. They were in public, in Luke’s diner, surrounded by werewolves. There wasn’t any use in trying to hide anything.

Stiles quickly ate his apple pie, shovelling it into his mouth and drowning the last of his coffee as swiftly as he could without actually burning his tongue (he had plans for his tongue later on, thanks) and stretched his arms over his head faking a yawn. He said something about being exhausted and they should get going.

The minute they were outside on their own, Stiles’ hand slipped into Derek’s back pocket giving it a pinch and continued walking.

“Thought you were tired?” Derek rumbled.

“And here I thought I heard something about werewolves picking up on lies?”

Stiles is pretty sure he heard Derek snicker but they didn’t speak any more, quickening their pace to Derek’s place.

-

Stiles bites down on Derek’s nipple while his hand pulls at the other. They’ve barely made it inside Derek’s room, shutting the door with a bang before Stiles was on Derek, tripping over his own limbs and the clothes Derek had changed out of earlier on the ground.

“Tell me if I need to stop,” Stiles says talking to Derek’s nipple rather than his face, “because holy hell.”

“No,” Derek sighs.

Before he can continue Stiles’ mouth and hand is off of Derek’s chest – and that is the complete opposite of what Derek wants.

“Okay, okay,” Stiles repeats taking a step back from Derek.

“No I meant no, you don’t need to stop. I don’t _want_ you to stop,” Derek drags Stiles in by the front of his shirt and kisses him. Kisses him like all the other times they have over the past few days, kisses him like it’s the first and last time, dirty with too much tongue and spit but also tender and caring. Like they can’t decide which is better, so why not have both.

“Whoa, hey,” Stiles pulls away from the kiss and Derek frowns like a petulant child the corner of his eyes wrinkling.

“That’s stopping,” Derek points out.

“Communication is key here Derek, it involves actual talking and no frowning or pouting or eyebrow raises constitute talking.”

Derek grabs Stiles’ face in his hands so that they’re staring at each other, “I want this Stiles,” and his eyes are so earnest, inviting and eager that Stiles believes him. “Is that enough communication for you?”

“Hardly,” Stiles snorts, “it’s one of my favourite past times. Our next communication will deal with a questionnaire or comment card, you know, to leave feedback like in those fancy hotels. Hey, I wonder if the Wolf Lodge has any…”

“If you don’t get to work they’ll be no communication at all.”

“Work? This isn’t a job interview. Besides, a blow job implies I’ve passed.”

Needless to say their first time together hadn’t gone as smooth as it could have. There was a lot of, “is that good?” “There?” “No, move more that way’s,” but by the end when they’d both had their orgasm, flopped down on the bed panting and laughing like children it hardly made a difference how all the fumbling went. The one thing the agreed on was they had to do that again, and again soon.

The other thing they agreed on, the morning after their date when they stumbled down the stairs groggily in their boxers with no shirts, to a stern looking Laura was that sex needed to happen at Stiles’ house.

Laura had pursed her lips, looked back down at her newspaper pretending to ignore them, it lasted only a minute.

“While I’m not a total prude, I’d like to point out the etiquette of a good roommate is a heads up. Not me trying to sleep only to get woken up by moans and dirty, dirty sex sounds,” Laura scrunched up her face, “not when it’s coming from my brother and my employee.”

Derek’s torn between wanting to sigh and being bright red whereas Stiles is just red as a candy cane.

“I uh, forgot about werewolves and the noises,” Stiles admits, “Next time we’ll go back to my place, sorry Laura,” Stiles finishes earnestly.

“Or you guys could just move in together,” Laura shrugs and can’t help but laugh when she looks at her younger brothers face and his boyfriend, both gobsmacked with their mouth hanging open, no noises coming out. “Oh, lack of words? That’s the complete opposite of last night,” Laura jokes folding up her newspaper and leaving the kitchen to go change.

-

So yes, Stiles and Derek need a little separation, spend time with _other_ people. Stiles is walking back to his place with a still down in the gutter Scott after the town meeting. No one has outright confronted Scott, which is probably worse than hearing the whispers about their anger over the Argent’s. Their core group of friends have been there to try and cheer Scott up but to no avail, Scott’s only happiness is that the village seems to take their angry whispering out on Scott and not Melissa. They still smile and go to Melissa when they’re injured or sick like nothing has happened.

“We need to start operation GAB,” Stiles declares handing Scott a bottle of beer, flopping down bedside him on the couch.

“GAB?” Scott scrunches his face up as he twists the bottle cap off the beer.

“Get Allison Back.”

“Don’t,” Scott groans.

“Don’t you, ‘don’t me’ Scott McCall. You’re my best friend in this village and your happiness is my happiness.”

“Then prepare for misery.”

“Were you a drama major? Jesus. Do you love this woman or what?”

“Of course!”

“Then we’re going to get her back.”

“Where are you going?”

Stiles is running up the stairs and Scott can hear him rummaging about. He comes back down with a notepad and a pen looking smug. Scott is scared for his life. Stiles draws a square at one end of the piece of paper and writes Verdun in the box, he draws a line down the middle of the paper and a similar square at the other end of the paper and writes Wulfstan. He then proceeds to draw two stick people, one in a triangle dress in the Verdun box, and the other evidently naked in the Wulfstan box.

“I’m not an artist,” Stiles shrugs.

“What the fuck dude?”

“Allison here, you here,” Stiles points out by pointing his pen at each boxed town as if Scott is going to have trouble figuring that out on his own.

“Scott move here,” Scott sighs playing along with this stupid game, talking like a caveman, moving Stiles’ hand and the pen drawing a line from his own stick character to Verdun, “Then Scott gets killed. Allison move here,” he repeats drawing a line from Verdun to Wulfstan, “Then Allison gets mauled.”

Stiles ponders, looking at the diagram like it’ll come to life and pop out a solution. There isn’t one unless Scott and Allison want to live on the little piece of road between the village and the town that belongs to neither of them. Then it hits Stiles.

“What about living in the town one over?” Stiles screeches startling Scott who’s taking a sip of his beer. “No Verdun vs. Wulfstan dilemma, you guys could start over be happy together.”

“And leave our families behind, our friends?”

“It’s a start,” Stiles shrugs, “Your mom will still come visit you, I’m sure of it. I’ll come visit you, even if I get dirty looks from the rest of the village. I bet the rest of the village will ease up in a few months.”

“What if they never let me back in Wulfstan?”

“I’ll fight Laura on it tooth and nail if I have to.”

“Why are you doing this?” Scott asks earnestly.

“Because man, you were one of the first people in this village that actually talked to me, and didn’t try and fuck around with me to mess with my head. You’re my best bud!”

Scott looks reluctant but a determined Stiles knows he can break him down after a few more beers. If Scott really, truly doesn’t want it then Stiles will back off – but if Scott wants Allison, wants to be with her then Stiles will do anything in his power to get them together.

-

“Derrrrek,” Stiles drawls into the phone later that night after he and Scott finished talking about operation GAB.

“You’re drunk.”

“Inebriated.”

“No, you’re just drunk,” Derek huffs down the line.

“Well Scott needed the beers so I could convince him of operation GAB and when one friend drinks, the other one does too.”

“Do I even want to know what the hell you’re talking about?”

“It’s probably a conversation we best have face-to-face,” Stiles admits.

Derek makes an affirmative noise followed by an awkward silence. Despite their agreement to actually just spend a day apart, hangout with other people – Derek with Isaac and Boyd for a boys night, and Stiles with Scott – they knew they wouldn’t last long before one of them was calling the other. Especially when it’s almost midnight and the saps that they are wouldn’t be able to fall asleep unless they at least texted each other.

They get through a two minute conversation of Stiles asking what Derek did with his ‘boys night’ which consisted of playing poker, Isaac coming out on top and wiping Boyd and Derek clean of all their money. Stiles reminds himself that next time it’s Isaac’s turn to buy breakfast at Luke’s before Stiles inevitable changes the topic of conversation.

“What are you wearing?” Stiles tries and fails to ask in his best come-hither voice, granted they’re on the phone.

“Nothing. What are you wearing?”

“What?” Stiles sputters, he had meant it as a joke. Thought Derek would sigh and say ‘really Stiles?’ But that’s just one of the many things Stiles is starting to love about Derek; he’s full of surprises – surprises that seem to be only for the sole benefit of Stiles, like it’s their own little secret.

“What are you wearing?” and okay, Derek definitely just perfected the come-hither voice on the phone.

“My boxers,” Stiles meeps into the phone.

“Liar,” Derek laughs.

“Oh c’mon man, there’s no way you can tell I’m lying through the phone! Unless you’re looking through the window, oh my God are you?” Stiles thrashes about under the covers sitting up to look out his window, only to realise that the blinds are closed, as is his bedroom door.

“I’m guessing you’re in track pants and your old university sweater? The one that’s worn down to tatters. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had thermal socks on as well.”

“Asshole,” Stiles mutters settling himself back into bed; he shimmies out of his track pants and sends his socks flying while he’s at it, “This cold weather is unreal.”

He can still hear Derek chuckling as he tosses his cell phone on the bed to pull the sweater over his head so that he’s _now_ only in his boxers.

“Oh well hello there mini Stiles, how I’ve missed you,” Stiles says into the phone, “He says he misses not so Mini Derek.”

“Shut up,” Derek groans, not a sexy groan but an ‘I can’t believe I’m talking to you groan.’

“If you’re not actually naked right now I’ll be pissed,” Stiles speaks over Derek, his hand tracing the outline of his soft cock.

There’s a minute of silence and Stiles thinks that Derek has actually been the biggest assholes of all assholes to ever asshole until he hears his phone make a beeping sound. He pulls his phone away and sees that he has a new message – a new picture, from Derek – and he opens it up and gasps.

“Okay, so you’re definitely naked,” Stiles breaths as he feels his cock stir in complete interest.

The picture is of Derek’s hard cock in his hand; his hand is gripped loosely around it as if he’s about to stroke upwards. It’s not very good lighting, he probably only has the bedside lamp on, but Stiles can see that glorious cock that he’s rapidly become obsessed with, peeking out of the foreskin. He can see Derek’s leg bent at an angle so that his legs are sprawled outwards so that he can play with himself more easily, the wiry hair on his legs in all directions.

“You hard yet?” Derek asks.

“It’s kind of hard not to be when you send me a picture of your dick,” Stiles screeches. He’s pushed down his boxers to below his knees as he starts to fist his cock. “I think I may make it my background on my phone.”

“Do that and that’s all you’ll have to get yourself off.”

“Noted,” Stiles chuckles. “You know with the invention of things such as video chatting I’d like to know why we’re having phone sex.”

“Call me old fashioned,” Derek jokes.

“Or you could just come over.”

“I’d rather you use that filthy mouth of yours to make me come. Then I want to hear that mouth of yours moan out my name as I make you come. You’re always such in a rush that I hardly get to enjoy those noises you make, all of them, now is my time to enjoy it.”

“Shit. I totally want your cock in my mouth right now,” Stiles blurts out. It’s not all that coy or sexy but it’s the honest to God truth and the first thing that came into his mind, so he said it.

If the little noises are anything to go by, Derek is still enjoying it.

“I’d love to record you sucking my cock,” Derek admits, “The noises you make as you take my cock further into your mouth, the spit that runs down your chin, the gagging noise you make when it becomes too much. Yet the funny thing is Stiles, the minute I give you a breather you’re slurping my cock down again, like you need it.”

“I do need it,” Stiles groans shutting his eyes as he fists his cock harder just imaging himself sucking Derek’s dick, “To see and feel the way your grip always gets tighter, rougher, the moans you always try and hold back like I don’t affect you. I know I do affect you Derek, you’re not as good of a hider as you think you are.”

“Oh?”

“The way your eyes track my movement when we’re out in public, you think I don’t notice?” Stiles chuckles, “The way you ever so slightly melt into me when I touch you, like I can mold you, reshape you. I may be the screamer, but you Derek Hale are the hooded eyes, heavy breather that wants nothing more than to have my hands on you, my mouth on you anywhere I can get. Whether it’s my hands working your cock, getting you hard.”

Stiles can already hear Derek’s breathing getting harsher and if he had the mind to listen more intently he could probably hear Derek working his own cock, but Stiles is just as distracted – gets off such as much as talking and working over Derek just as much as he loves getting worked over by Derek. There’s something inherently pleasing, satisfying to know he’s made his partner come apart – to take the time to focus only on them.

“Or my mouth, opening you up with you on your hands and knees,” Stiles continues, “As I push your cheeks apart, running my tongue over your hole, mouthing at your balls, pulling your dick back so I can get my mouth and tongue on there as well.  Then when you’re nice and wet, my spit all over you, then I’ll look forward to working you open.”

“Stiles,” Derek groans and Stiles can already picture Derek. His eyes screwed shut, looking like it’s taken all the energy out of him just to say that one word, as if Derek loses focus then he’ll tip over the edge too soon.

“It’s really rather cute when you think you’re being subtle Derek, when you think I don’t notice you pushing back ever so slightly to get more of my fingers in you, more of my cock in you. But I do notice, I notice the way your arms are shaking like the big strong werewolf doesn’t have the strength to keep himself up, the way your shoulders are quivering. That’s what makes me want to fuck you harder, with my fingers or my cock, hell even my tongue just to see how hard I can go, how fast I can go before your arms give out.”

“Good luck,” Derek manages to get out.

“I plan to make it my life mission,” Stiles chuckles, “The day I fuck Derek Hale hard enough that he can’t even hold himself up, that will be a day for the books.”

He hears Derek snort – and that just won’t do.

“Actually, thinking about it I think I have a solution to that. It’s not about fucking you harder and deeper. No, it’s about fucking you so slowly, inch by inch getting myself into you that you’re riding the knifes edge between being so close to coming, so close to me taking you to where you want to go but not getting there any time soon. If I keep that long enough, you Derek, will not be able to hold yourself up.”

“Fuck, Stiles,” and Stiles knows that Derek’s come. He can hear that final hitch of Derek’s breath that he’s become well accustomed to, the way he grits out Stiles’ name like its troublesome. While Stiles is pleased with himself, all he can think about is the come that Derek’s spilt, running down his hand, down his dick onto his balls and legs and Stiles think it’s a damn waste that he’s not there to clean it up with his tongue.

Stiles says as much as he can hear Derek curse even more over the phone – yeah Stiles totally has this phone sex thing down.

“You better hope the next time I see you that we’re somewhere private,” Derek’s hoarse voice breaks Stiles out of his ‘I just made Derek Hale come’ haze, “Because I want nothing more than to fuck you right there, right then. To know that you’re open and ready for me.”

“I don’t think your fellow villagers would be thrilled with that,” Stiles points out.

“Good thing werewolves know how to clear out a place pretty damn quickly.”

“Until I can no longer face them without being utterly embarrassed.”

“I guess you’re stuck in your house until I decide to come over,” Derek snickers, “Maybe I’ll be selfish and say I want you to fuck me. I’d love to open myself up for you though, make you sit there and watch as I finger myself; open myself up while you squirm because you just always want to touch, can never sit in one damn spot for any length of time.”

“Nope don’t like sitting and waiting,” Stiles admits with heavy breaths.

“Maybe I’d even let you film it, watch it at night when you’re lonely or when you decide we need another ‘boys night out’ with our friends. That way you can remember what I look like when I’m thinking about you, fingering myself, maybe working a vibrator up there as well.”

“I, uh, fuck would never forget what that looked like, believe me.”

“Glad to know I’m not forgettable,” Derek chuckles.

And Stiles doesn’t know why it’s that, just the noise of Derek chuckling, having fun that tips him over the edge as he comes all over himself with Derek’s name. Stiles likes having sex with Derek, it hasn’t been all love making, or rough fucking, it’s been awkward with complaining of cramps in different positions, laughing when one of them said something mid fuck, something random or stupid – it’s been _fun_ sex.

I mean who logically has phone sex in a village the size of a shoe – other than for it to be fun, stupid and just something completely different.

 There are a few minutes of silence on the line as both of the men clean themselves up. Stiles settles himself back onto the bed and picks up his phone.

“You there?” He yawns.

“I’m here, you should get to sleep.”

“Wait, you weren’t serious about that fucking me where you see me thing were you?”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” Derek mocks, “Goodnight Stiles.”

“Whoa wait!”

“Yes?”

“Are you coming over tomorrow morning?”

“Night Stiles,” Derek laughs as he clicks off of the phone.

Stiles seriously hopes that Derek does come over tomorrow morning because he’s not about to risk Derek being serious about the fuck on sight thing. Call it a werewolf thing or a Derek thing but now that he and Stiles are a thing he likes to make sure people know it. Nothing would declare that Stiles was totally his more than a public fuck on the town gazebo.

Stiles does _not_ dream about that later that night, about Derek fucking him rough and fast on the gazebo where anyone could see them – because that’s just totally crazy, not to mention probably illegal.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depending on how much I squeeze into the next chapter, there should only be one more left, two at max! Yes I totally want Scott and Allison to get back together because they're just so damn cute in the show. I still basically ship everyone with everyone anyway. ;)


	16. Chapter 16

The next morning when Stiles wakes up, back to being wrapped up nice and cosy in his clothes because no way was he going to sleep naked in the freezing cold he remembers the night before. The phone sex. That was a thing, that totally happened and something Stiles would totally be on board with again. Not that he’s about to throw actual human, touching contact sex out the window – but it’s fun to spice things up.

Speaking of spicing things up, he remembers Derek’s words the previous night. “ _You better hope the next time I see you that we’re somewhere private, because I want nothing more than to fuck you right there, right then. To know that you’re open and ready for me.”_ Yeah, Stiles doesn’t want to deal with morning wood, but just thinking about it has him at half-mast. Nothing a quick jerk off session with some fingering in the shower can’t cure.

The thing is Stiles doesn’t know if Derek was serious or not, on one hand he doesn’t think Derek would fuck him in the middle of the village square if only for the fact that its winter and that would take blue balls to a _whole_ new meaning. On the other hand, it’s Derek Hale and he’s come to realise he has a possessive streak even if it isn’t blatant.

Stiles groans and grabs a granola bar, make that two, from his kitchen cupboard before he’s swinging his work satchel over his head. He had planned on going to Luke’s for breakfast like he does almost every morning, but he doesn’t want to risk seeing Derek there and being dragged off into some corner, or the back of Gypsy’s Mechanics for a quick fuck – however tempting, _very_ temping that may be.

He scurries across the village square, barely waving at people, flinging open the town hall doors and stumbling in, out of breath. Because there’s no way Derek would fuck him at work, where his _sister_ works. Is there? He hopes to God not. Kind of.

He nods his head at Boyd in the break room as they make their coffee before Stiles is downstairs in his electronic lair. There’s not all that much to do, not anymore. Laura told him to double and triple check his encryptions, to make sure that everything has been re-secured. She told him to delete any information they have on Verdun, they don’t need Verdun to be able to trace any leaked information back to Wulfstan – not when Laura and Chris are on a verge of a new treaty.

By lunch time, Stiles would deny having his feet up on the table, sprawled back in his comfy office chair stuffing a club sandwich in his mouth. Except that’s exactly what he’s doing, and he has a mayonnaise splotch on his chin and that’s the moment Derek decides to come in.

Stiles startles bringing his feet back down to the ground, wiping at the mayonnaise with the back of his hand. Derek’s in a dark blue mechanic jumpsuit with oil stains splattered in random directions. Stiles can see melting snowflakes in Derek’s hair that’s made it flatten to his forehead rather than the rumpled ‘just had sex,’ hair he always sports. It’s possibly the sexiest, most adorable Stiles has ever seen Derek – and he’s seen Derek in _every_ position. Multiple times, from every which angle.

“Lunch break?” Stiles asks rolling his chair back, away from Derek, “You didn’t text. You normally do.”

Sometimes they meet at Luke’s for lunch, sometimes they stay at their workplace and just text. Never have they met at the others place of work – although Stiles has seen Derek at the Town Hall a few times mainly to see Laura though.

“Thought I’d surprise you,” Derek shrugs moving towards Stiles. He sits on the edge of the desk right in front of the computer. He leans forward both his hands grabbing the arms of Stiles’ chair and rolls him forward.

Derek tries not to smirk when he can hear the rapid beat of Stiles’ heart, you’d think Derek would have gotten use to the way Stiles’ heartbeat always picks up when he’s around Derek – but to be honest Derek isn’t ever going to get over it. It’s his favourite song.

“That looks good,” Derek nods towards the sandwich and before Stiles can say something, Derek’s gotten a hold of it and taking a large bite of it. There’s no time on Stiles’ part to protest before the sandwich is gone and Derek’s digging into the bag of Lay’s chips Stiles was going to have for dessert.

Derek has half a mind to finally offer Stiles some chips once majority of the bag has disappeared but Stiles still rolls his eyes and snatches the bag and finishes them few chips left in there. Asshole.

“Is that all?” Stiles asks, “You came here to eat my lunch? Don’t you know how to pack your own lunch like a good little boy? Did you forget your lunch money?”

“Can’t I just want to see my _boyfriend_?”

“You don’t need to say it like that asshat, word on the street is you were the one pining over me. Well now you got me and you’re fucking stuck with me.”

“Good,” Derek murmurs leaning forward so that he’s in Stiles’ personal space. His face is inches from Stiles’ and he can smell the salt and vinegar from the chips mixed with the sandwich and it should gross Stiles out but he just had the same meal – and it’s Derek. Nothing is really gross when it comes to him and Derek.

Next thing Stiles knows is they’re kissing. Derek’s hands are back to gripping the armrest, Stiles’ hands finding their way to the back of Derek’s neck pulling him in closer. Stiles is totally on board the kissing train, opening his mouth to let Derek in, biting on his lip. What he is _not_ expecting is to feel a hand working over his crotch.

“Whoa,” Stiles says into Derek’s mouth trying to move backwards. Derek chases his mouth, rolling the chair back closer to him, “Above the waistline buddy.”

Derek doesn’t seem to hear or really care, because his hand just continues massaging Stiles through his workpants and Stiles’ body is about ten steps ahead of his brain because he’s already starting to get hard. He needs to work on that brain-penis relationship, so they’re on the same page.

“I’m at work Derek,” Stiles sighs into Derek’s mouth and if Stiles was totally against this he shouldn’t still be kissing Derek. Derek seems to realise as much, because he smiles against Stiles’ mouth.

“So?”

“I’m at work, where your sister also works. Where your sister just happens to be my boss,” Stiles explains running his teeth along Derek’s jaw, along the stubble.

“We’re in the basement,” Derek explains, angling his head to the side so that Stiles can continue his journey along Derek’s jaw, “It’s as sound proof as it gets.”

Derek turns his head to run his lips over Stiles’ ears and he knows that he’s won. Can feel the minute Stiles gives in, completely. Stupid erogenous zones.

“You’re a terrible, terrible fucking influence,” Stiles jolts out of his chair, sending it flying backwards ramming into a wall. He pushes Derek back, hitting a bunch of keys on the keyboard and jostling the computer screen.

Stiles pulls the zipper down on Derek’s jumpsuit only to grumble when he sees another layer of clothes, so much effort. Derek pulls his arms out of the jumpsuit so that it’s only hanging around his waist. Stiles doesn’t bother with getting Derek’s shirt over his head, goes straight for his jeans, unzipping them, pulling them and his boxers only so he has enough room to get to the goods.

If it’s any consolation prize (because clearly office work sex is _such_ a hassle) Derek’s already hard.

“How long have you been thinking about this?” Stiles smirks when he takes Derek into his hands. He starts to pump Derek with just the right amount of grip that Derek likes because they are going to have the very definition of a quickie. “What’s it like being half hard at work while you’re fixing cars?”

Derek only grunts, closing his eyes and giving into the feeling.

“What’s it like bending over an engine, working on a car but only thinking about the next time you’ll be bent over and I’ll be behind you, fucking you?”

Derek goes for Stiles’ jeans, unzipping them so he and Stiles are one equal footing. Like Derek, Stiles’ jeans are only pulled down enough so that he can get his cock free, there’s not a lot of room to move but it’s alright.

“When I first saw you at Gypsy’s that first day, all that ran through my mind was your face, and that stubble and the soundtrack to the bad porno I was dreaming about,” Stiles admits.

“Yeah?” Derek chuckles.

Stiles lines up his and Derek’s cock together his hand going over both of their cocks as he starts to work them both. The grip isn’t as tight but it’s just as amazing, if not better, feeling them combined together.

“Yeah,” Stiles admits, “Like sorry sir I don’t have enough money to pay, but I can totally repay in blowjobs.”

“That’s terrible,” Derek laughs, his laugh turning into a muted gasp when he can feel Stiles rocking into his own fist.

“That’s why I said bad, cheesy porno.”

“Shh,” Derek says bringing in Stiles for a kiss because Derek doesn’t need a bad porn narrated to him when he’s got a very real thing going on right here.

Derek wraps his hand around Stiles’, both working themselves.

“Oh God,” Stiles groans, his free hand clutching at Derek’s shoulder his nails digging in.

“Switch places,” Derek murmurs his hand moving away from their cocks and no, that’s the complete opposite of what Stiles wants to happen right now. Derek started this he better end it. “That’s why we need to switch places,” Derek chuckles and Stiles realised he said that aloud, “So I can fuck you.”

Stiles half waddles half walks since his pants are now down around his ankles, real classy Stilinski, so that his palms are resting on the desk. Derek moves his hands down Stiles’ clothed sides, readjusting his hips so that Stiles’ ass is sticking out more.

He runs his finger down Stiles’ ass, toying with the hole when his hands still.

“So you were expecting this?”

“Nope, not at all,” Stiles only half lies, “I just had a little fun with myself this morning is all.”

“And you call me the terrible influence,” Derek whispers into the nape of Stiles’ neck, leaving a small bite mark right where Stiles’ shirt meets his neck just barely visible.

Derek reaches into his pocket to fetch a tube of lube when Stiles groans. “That’s the very definition of a bad influence. Who keeps lube in their work uniform pocket?”

“I did tell you I’d fuck you when I saw you next didn’t I? Wanted to be prepared.”

“Someone was a boy scout.”

There’s a smack to Stiles’ ass that sends his palms skidding against the desk so that he’s sprawled on top of the desk in the most obscene manner possible. If someone were to walk in now, well it would be a sight for sore eyes, for the intruder at least.

“It doesn’t help if I’m so on deck with this spanking thing” Stiles grits out as he feels Derek spank his ass again, on the other cheek. He repeats it again on both cheeks so that Stiles’ ass is evenly red. It’s a delicious sight and only for Derek to see and Stiles to feel when he sits down for the rest of the day at work.

Stiles can hear the opening of a packet and squirt of the lube bottle as Derek slicks up his cock, then nudging at Stiles’ asshole. He pushes in slowly, his breathing even. He can hear Stiles not groan exactly, but making an ‘mmm,’ sound like it’s the most delicious thing happening to him.

Once Derek’s all the way in he leans forward one hand still on Stiles’ hip the other interlacing with Stiles’ hand on the desk. It’s not quick thrusts, just aborted little movements as he barely rocks back and forth.

Stiles’ cries out when one of his small thrusts slides over his prostate, pushing back to get more. Derek’s already all the way in Stiles, but Stiles wants more, wants Derek all the time. Derek would never deny him; act like he didn’t want the same things. Derek would be in Stiles all the time if it were possible, or have Stiles in him.

It’s like their transported to a different world when they’re having sex. It’s just the two of them, no nosy villagers, no nosy sisters or friends. No drama. It’s happiness, goofiness, words whispered and mumbled that they’d have trouble saying outside of the bedroom. Once they’d done it enough times, their whispered words weren’t whispered anymore, but able to be said out loud, out in public.

There’s no use in hiding their feelings, however intense they are, and getting more intense as each day passes. There’s no use in being shy or coy. They’re happy together and they don’t care who knows, however sickening they may be.

“We’re not in a position,” Stiles groans, “To take this very slow,” he reminds Derek.

“Tonight then?”

Like Derek even needs to ask but Stiles nods his head, before his head is hanging down like he’s ready to just sprawl out on the desk.

Derek untangles his hands from Stiles’ and places it on Stiles’ hip as he pulls back and starts to thrust in harder and faster. He watches as Stiles’ hand move to the edge of the desk so that he has something to grip on, before he falls flat on his face. Stiles’ knuckles turn ghostly white as he holds on, his groans in unison with Derek’s.

Derek takes pity on Stiles, knows that if he tries to move his hand he’ll probably knock himself out on the desk, and unconscious sex isn’t at all on Derek’s list of things to try in the bedroom. He wraps one of his hands around Stiles’ cock, in a vice like grip as he starts to pump him in unison with the pace he’s fucking into Stiles.

He can tell Stiles is about to come, his shoulders shaking, his elbows look like they’re about to give out and with one last upward stroke he’s coming, landing on the table and over Derek’s first. He places a kiss to Stiles’ shoulder as he fucks into Stiles a few more times, one hard final thrust as he stills.

“If we had a plug, I wouldn’t have worn the condom. Made you wear the plug with my come in you,” Derek hums as he slowly pulls out of Stiles.

“Ugh, add that to the list of things we need to buy. Is there even a sex shop in this village?” Stiles asks wincing as he bends over to pull his boxers and pants back up.

“Would you really want to buy anything from a sex shop in this village? Everyone would know your business,” Derek sniggers.

“Noted. Buy things online.”

Once Derek’s rids himself of the condom and back in his mechanic jumpsuit, he wraps his arms around Stiles’ waist who’s still leaning against the desk for support. Stiles rests his forehead against Derek’s shoulder trying to catch his breath. Whoever thought a quickie would be a good idea hadn’t really thought of the clean up afterwards. There’s a bathroom across the hall and the chances of them making it across is in their favour since they are in the basement after all, but it’s still a hassle.

Besides they can’t even bask in the afterglow, Derek has to get back to work as does Stiles.

“I’ll come over tonight?” Derek asks as he leans in to kiss Stiles.

“Duh.”

Twenty minutes later Stiles’ desk phone is ringing which only means one thing, Laura. He picks up the phone, a lot more chipper than he was this morning when he came into work.

“What’s up boss lady?”

“Care to explain what the hell that email was about? I don’t know how to break codes, Stiles.”

“What?” Stiles asked puzzled as he opens up his email on the computer and goes to the sent folder.

There is in fact an email that was sent to Laura almost half an hour ago, and when he opens it up it’s just a bunch of keys that were smashed. It’s no encryption, no secret code. That’s when it dawns on Stiles and he has a brief flash of horror before he realises that, thankfully, Laura cannot see him.

“Oh uh sorry,” Stiles stammers, “It wasn’t meant to encrypted or anything, I just spilled some crumbs on the keyboard and was trying to clean them up. I must have emailed you somehow, my bad.”

“Only you,” Laura sighs before hanging up.

Office sex is never happening again Stiles tells himself. No matter how good it was.

-

“So uh, I need to talk to you,” Stiles says with a mouthful of pizza in his mouth.

They’d just worked up quite an appetite; Stiles fucking into Derek like there was no tomorrow. Stiles had started going on about how under no circumstances were they ever having sex at either of their workplaces again after Laura called him going on about the butt keyboard smashing email Derek managed to send.

Derek found it funny. Stiles didn’t. So of course, Derek’s plan of attack was to make his move on Stiles. Someday, that would wear off. Honestly.

They’re sitting on Stiles’ bed, under the blankets the box of pizza in between them both. They hadn’t bothered with plates, why create more mess than absolutely necessary?

“Go on,” Derek said taking a sip from his can of Coke.

“It’s about Scott?” Stiles replied in more of a question than an actual statement. Derek set down his can of Coke on the side table and waited for Stiles to continue.

“Well, you see, I kind of want to get him and Allison back together and I’d like your help.” Stiles grabbed another slice of pizza as a distraction. “Well maybe your help wasn’t the right word, but your support, your support would be nice and totally appreciated.”

“Let me get this straight,” Derek rumbled, “You want me to support you in helping a member of this village get back together with not only the enemy neighbours, but particularly one of those enemy neighbours who just happens to be my ex-girlfriends niece?”

“When you put it like that it sounds a bit intense,” Stiles admits.

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“Hey, no. Hear me out man,” Stiles protests, “Allison as far as I know has no crazy tendencies, she was never part of whatever grudge these two towns have. She was an innocent bystander, much like I was. Yet I helped you guys, this village because I thought it was the right thing to do. I still do think that. We can’t exactly hold that against Allison can we? I’m definitely not going to.”

“You waited until after the sex and filling me up with food to bring this up,” Derek shakes his head. “I don’t know whether to throw your naked ass out in the snow or praise you for your smartness.”

“I’ll go with the second option,” Stiles beams.

“What do you need me to do?” Derek sighs; he knows when he’s been defeated.

-

“You need a new car man,” Scott notes, “What year was this thing even made in?”

They’re currently in the little garage at Stiles’ house as Stiles tries to get his precious baby to start up. To be fair, living in such a small village he hasn’t had much use for the jeep, hell the only time he’d left the village was when they attacked Verdun. Even then, they’d been on foot, unfortunately. So yeah, Stiles’ car is going to take a few tries to get started but his baby won’t let him down. And hey, if it does he’s got a hot mechanic to fix it – and he’s pretty sure he could get a good deal on it.

“Patience, grasshopper.”

Finally, _finally_ the car starts and Stiles reverses out of the garage. He’s got his phone tucked into one of the cup holders at his side with the GPS up telling him in which direction he needs to head. Not that he needs much help finding his way out of Wulfstan, there is only one road after all.

“Why do I have to help you pick out a present for your friend Lydia back in Beacon Hills? Can’t you take Derek with you?”

Stiles wants to roll his eyes so hard at the fact that Scott didn’t even manage to pick out the lie when Stiles had told him the previous day they needed to go shopping. Granted, Scott probably wasn’t using his werewolf powers to figure out whether Stiles was lying or not – because well, why the fuck would he?

“Derek, shopping? I’m scared he might give the sales people a heart attack with his grumpiness.”

And that, at least is the truth.

“Why can’t you just buy her something from Le Chat Club?” Scott protests, “Or Kim’s antiques?”

“Lydia hates cats and anything cat related and there’s antiques and then there’s vintage and believe me, Lydia would know the difference. Now I swear to God if you don’t shut up I’ll invest in a dog whistle.”

“You’re buying me lunch,” Scott grumbles.

Ten minutes later Stiles turns the jeep down a street that ends in a cul-de-sac with a forest behind it. No stores in sight. There are some cars pulled in the driveways of the other houses, two little children playing, one pulling the smaller one in a sled and ends up falling flat on their bottom when they walk over some ice. Stiles pulls out and parks in front of a small brick bungalow house with a “to rent” sign on the front lawn.

Parked in the driveway is a silver Toyota with a girl leaning against the driver side of the door in a long black patterned fabric coat with a knitted hat on. She perks up when she sees Stiles’ jeep, and Stiles getting out.

“What the fuck,” Scott screeches when the realisation of whom that woman actually is standing by the car. It would be hard for Scott after all, to forget who Allison Argent is – the woman he loves.

“Allison, glad you found it alright,” Stiles hollers walking around the jeep towards her. They awkwardly hug, but she has a smile on her face so everything seems to be going alright so far. Scott however, is still sitting in the Jeep stunned into silence, like a statue.

“You made sure to email me the directions, then text them to me,” Allison giggles, “I couldn’t get lost even if I wanted to.”

“Scott so help me, if you do not get out of that car,” Stiles says, he doesn’t need to yell because he knows Scott will hear him.

“Can someone explain what the hell is going on,” Scott finally manages to get out his eyes darting between Stiles and Allison, and then to the houses around them as if he’s waiting for an ambush.

“Isn’t it obvious, we’re here to look at a potential rental for you and Allison,” Stiles replies holding his arms out as if to say, isn’t it obvious? Allison just shrugs, smiling to show off her adorable dimples that will probably make Scott melt into the surrounding snow around him any minute.

“Have I missed a few steps?” Scott asks, completely puzzled.

“Well,” Stiles starts, and then he explains everything.

-

“Stiles are you alright?” Melissa asked the minute Stiles walked into the Doctor’s office. Melissa was behind the receptionist desk, as she organised and filed paperwork.

“Great actually, I just came to talk to you about something.”

The look on Stiles’ face must have told Melissa it was a serious conversation, she walked around the desk and sat down on one of the patient chairs in the waiting area, she patted the chair next to her for Stiles to sit in.

Thankfully, Scott wasn’t in the office today, Derek had taken care of that, invited him out for an early dinner. Stiles doubted Scott would be suspicious as to why the whole gang was there and not Stiles, he’d probably think Stiles was still at work.

“I came to talk to you about Scott,” Stiles started, “And Allison.”

“Ah,” Melissa said nodding her head.

Stiles explained that he thought if Scott really did love Allison, like he believed he did and if Allison still loved Scott than why aren’t they together? He went on to explain to Melissa that he know how hard it was for her to uproot her entire life, to find a place that was safe for her son, but if there was ever a chance for Scott to be happy shouldn’t he take it?

Melissa nodded her head of course; she said she’d never stop Scott if there was a chance it would lead to true happiness and not some fling. Stiles had sighed in relief, figured Melissa would say as much but he just had to double check. Double check that it was okay he brought it up at the next village meeting, and if Melissa would be a supporter. Melissa said of course.

Thankfully at dinner, Derek managed to swipe Scott’s phone when he wasn’t looking and copy Allison’s number, he texted it to Stiles. For this plan to even work, Stiles had to know that Allison was on board or it was all futile.

The next day, after Stiles knew that Melissa and Allison were on board, he and Derek stood in Laura’s office just as she was getting ready to go home.

“I’d like to call a village meeting,” Stiles stated squaring his shoulders.

Laura raised her eyebrows but set her briefcase back down onto the large table in front of her, “Oh? What about?”

“Village stuff but I need everyone to be there.”

Laura looked to her brother to see if he’d further explain but he shrugged his shoulders and looked everywhere else but at Laura.

Derek knew it was probably wiser to give Laura a head’s up going into the meeting before she completely flipped her shit in front of the whole village, but then again not telling her might lead her to _have_ to be the sane one in front of the villagers. There was also the chance that if she knew what Stiles wanted to talk about she’d say no.

“Fine,” Laura shrugged because curiosity was always going to win over.

“Tonight,” Stiles nodded his head and scurried out the door before Laura changed her mind.

This time around, Stiles was in on the meeting while Scott was in the dark. Stiles had arranged for Melissa to invite Scott over for dinner so that he wouldn’t go out into the village square and realise that no one was anywhere to be seen and get suspicious.

“What’s the point of this?” Someone yelled from where they sat, other people nodding their heads in agreement.

“Sorry for the impromptu meeting,” Stiles cleared his throat as he stood nervously on the podium. Laura was seated behind him and to the left while Derek was seated on the right. “Laura didn’t actually call this meeting,” he continued before someone questioned why he was the one talking, “I did.”

Stiles let that sink in for a few minutes while he gathered his thoughts. He probably should have prepared himself a little more, written down a speech or at least some jot notes.

“I wanted to talk to you about Scott and his relationship with Allison Argent.”

There wasn’t an uproar, not right away anyway, there were murmurs and some gasps, Stiles had expected as much.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Laura asked rising from her seat.

“Hear me out,” Stiles sighed having a flash back to what he said to Derek. He explained much of the same stuff he said to Derek, adding a few more things here and there to try and emphasize his point that what he was saying was logical, that he didn’t belong in a psych ward, “All I’m saying is I’m not advocating that she move here or Scott move there but instead they move somewhere neutral – that Scott be allowed to come back and visit, that sometime yes Allison might be in tow but she’s not a threat. The treaty between Verdun and Wulfstan is going to be signed soon anyway.”

“Are you insane?” Taylor Doose yelled standing up from his seat, “Allow a member of Verdun, an _Argent_ into this village?”

“Not to live,” Stiles noted.

“I don’t care,” Taylor shouted, “As a long standing member of this village, as a business owner whose lost money and goods I won’t stand for it and neither should the rest of this village if they know what’s good for them.”

After Taylor’s speech some people nodded their heads in agreement voicing their opinions on how an Argent should never be trusted, how Taylor was right. Stiles figured it was a lost cause, but he wasn’t defeated yet. He’d go down fighting.

“How can you stand for this Laura? As mayor I urge you to take action,” Taylor continued.

Laura visibly tensed beside Stiles the look in her eyes anything but pleasant and Stiles had no idea if that was directed towards him or towards Taylor.

“You’re right Taylor,” Laura seethed, “I am the mayor and I urge _you_ to remember that unless you’d like to challenge my authority.”

Taylor looked down at his feet in submission shaking his head no. Although he was being submissive he in no way looked pleased about it.

“Oh for God sakes let the poor boy have his romance,” Ms Patty yelled out standing up, turning on Taylor, “I’ve had the fortune of having many loves and many husbands why should we deny the poor honey the same opportunity?”

“What if she’s a spy still working for Verdun?” Someone else yelled.

“Oh for fuck sakes,” Luke bellowed standing up toppling his chair over, “She’s an innocent kid in all of this mess, this fucking feuding going on for generations. Hearing about it from my father and grandfather when they were alive. Don’t you all get fucking sick of it? Whispering and gossiping like a bunch of teenagers about another town like we have nothing better to do with our lives?”

The room went deathly silent as Luke ranted. Luke never spoke at village meetings; Luke barely even wanted to _attend_ village meetings. His chest was huffing and puffing like he’d just ran a marathon and apparently he wasn’t done.

“And you,” he continued turning towards Taylor, “Your precious grocery store wasn’t the only thing that got damaged in the attack, we all felt it and I for one am sick of it. If Scott wants to run off and live in a log cabin in the woods away from this village then he can go for it. Hell I’m a little jealous of the idea myself. And Taylor, get yourself a girlfriend or boyfriend so you can stop acting like you’ve got a stick up your ass.”

“You go honey,” Ms Patty said whooping at Luke’s outburst she leaned forward in her chair to give Luke’s bum a punch. Luke jumped in surprise before he mumbled something under his breath and sat back down.

“Well,” Laura chuckled as she took over the podium, “It seems we’ve heard from both sides and I for one seem to favour Luke’s, who would have thought. I’m meeting with Chris in a few days’ times to talk over the treaty, Allison and Scott will be excluded from it, they can do as they please. I’m not saying Verdun and Wulfstan are going to have tail-gate parties anytime soon or ever in the future. But Luke is right, it’s getting old. If there are any objections or challenges to my authority now would be the time to voice them.”

Stiles stood in muted silence, not daring to even breathe as he waited to see if anyone would object. He had no idea what challenging Laura’s authority meant, or what would happen and he definitely did not want to see it actually entailed. After a few seconds that seemed to drag on for ages, when no one said anything she banged her gavel and declared the meeting over.

-

“So that’s what happened,” Stiles explains rubbing his gloved hands together because man was it still cold and there was a perfectly nice house they were standing outside of, when they could be inside.

“You did that for me?” Scott gaped, mouth wide open, “And you still want to be with me?” Scott turned to Allison.

“Yes,” Stiles nods at the same time Allison says, “Of course.”

Stiles trudges up to the front door and enters the pin the real estate agent gave him for the key box, retrieving the key from inside. He opens the door and lets Allison and Scott inside first before he follows suit. They knock the snow off their boots, taking them off and Stiles lets them have a look around on their own while he hovers in the doorway.

“So?” he asks when they come back down from upstairs now having looked at the whole house. It’s a good sign that they’re holding hands with ginormous smiles on their face.

“It’s perfect,” Allison beams, “The backyard even leads out into a forest, and the kitchen has all new appliances and everything!”

“Sold!” Stiles says matching Scott and Allison’s beaming smiles.

-

The treaty between Verdun and Wulfstan was signed on a Wednesday in the middle of January. There wasn’t any fanfare or parties, life in Wulfstan went on as it normally did. Laura had explained to Derek and by extension Stiles that Chris really did seem like he wanted the same things Laura did.

Chris wasn’t expecting any sort of communication with Wulfstan but he wasn’t going to go out of his way to cause any trouble nor was he going to disown his only daughter. But there does come a time when the fighting just has to end, it becomes too exhausting putting your time and energy into hating someone on principals that were created decades ago and only continued on because no one knew any better than to stop it.

Stiles, Isaac and Melissa were helping Scott pack up all his stuff and moving them to his car so that he could move it all to his new place, with Allison.

“I know this was my idea and all,” Stiles says, “But I’m really gonna miss you.”

“Me too,” Isaac agrees.

“I third that,” Melissa nods.

“I’m not moving that far away. Besides I’m still allowed back in the village, it’ll be like I never left.”

Scott is pretty sure if they pushed it, he could stay here, and Allison could stay as well. Eventually everyone would come around, if not Luke would beat the ever living crap out of them until they came around. Who knew Luke would be such an advocate of love. But it wasn’t fair on Allison; she’d always feel like she was on unequal grounds despite the treaty being sighed. Just as Scott would feel out of sorts if he ever tried to live in Verdun.

But this way, they get a new house, a new town but still have the closeness of their old homes, their families and friends. They don’t have to worry about snide remarks or questioning looks from the town they’re moving to. It’s a new town, a new start and a fresh beginning. Something they really need if they’re going to last.

There’s a tear in Melissa’s eye and Scott hurries to scoop her up in a hug, “It’s okay mom.”

“I know,” Melissa sniffles laughing, “I just, I’m proud of you. Still going to miss you though, it’ll be lonely.”

“I’ll visit every day.”

Melissa snorts, “I don’t think Allison would appreciate that. Don’t you worry about me, I won’t be too lonely.”

“Don’t tell me you’re dating,” Scott scrunches up his face, “Oh my God don’t tell me you’re dating Taylor!”

Melissa smacks her son in the head and Stiles laughs because hello, Melissa McCall is a knock out, she could so much better than Taylor Doose.

“I meant I still have everyone else in the village.”

They finish loading up Scott’s car and some of the village people stand by and wave as Scott drives off. It’s not like he’s gone forever, he promised to bring Allison back every Friday night for dinner at Melissa’s house, Allison even seemed happy about the idea, getting to know Scott’s mom.

-

**A few months later:**

It’s April 22nd also known as the Annual Spring Festival in Wulfstan. The whole village shuts early as everyone sets up their booths, putting bunting and lights all around the village as decoration. There are various food booths from cotton candy, to corndogs, candy apples to funnel cake with various drink booths as well. There’s a fortune telling dog, various carnival games, face painting and just about every other carnival related thing.

“When do Allison and Scott get here?” Erica asks her arm is looped through Boyd’s as she snuggles up next to him.

They’re all standing around the gazebo, Isaac, Erica, Boyd, Stiles and Derek. It’s early evening and the carnival is well under way, children running from one booth to the other, handing over their quarters to play at the booth games trying to win a plush toy. Stiles loves spring, he really does, and he can finally stand outside with just a light jacket on, a pair of jeans and sneakers without his teeth chattering. Getting used to winters in Wulfstan isn’t going to be an easy task.

“He texted me a few minutes ago, he should be here in half an hour or so,” Stiles answers.

“I never thought I’d see the day when you miss Scott McCall,” Boyd huffs shoving his shoulder lightly against Erica.

“You don’t know what you got until it’s gone and all that,” Erica shrugs trying to play it off like she doesn’t miss having Scott around all the time.

“Alright, we meeting at Luke’s when Scott gets here then?” Isaac asks, his eyes darting towards the doggy fortune teller itching to go over and have a look.  

“Got it,” everyone says as they go off in their own directions.

Stiles has got Derek’s hand in his as they walk around the carnival looking all the different booths. Isaac unsurprisingly is at the doggy fortune teller, spinning a large wheel eagerly waiting for his fortune to be told. Erica and Boyd are hand in hand about to go into the Lost City Fun House.

“Want a stuffed Smurf? What about a stuffed SpongeBob” Stiles asks, “As your date I feel obligated to try and win you something.”

“You couldn’t win” Derek snorts.

Stiles watches as Kirk hands a little kid a stuffed Tweety Bird and rolls his eyes, piece of fucking cake. He drags Derek towards the booth and hands over his change and in return Kirk hands him three small white balls.

“Topple the top bottle, you get a small prize. Topple the whole thing you get a large prize,” Kirk explains and steps back to let Stiles throw the ball.

Stiles has totally got this, years of practicing lacrosse back in high school has earned him a pretty strong arm to throw. The first ball doesn’t land anywhere near the piles of 10 bottles stacked. He glares at Derek daring him to laugh or say something as he flexes his arm and prepares to throw the second.

This time, the second one _does_ hit the bottles but they don’t budge. What the fuck? The third ball hits in the same spot but with more force and _still_ the bottles don’t move. Stiles is fucking pissed now.

“This game is rigged!” He protests.

“No shit,” Derek chuckles.

“But the kid won,” he pouts.

“Because it was made easier for the kid. Are you forgetting that you live in a village full of werewolves? They can’t make it easy for us.”

“What! I didn’t even think of that,” Stiles screeches, “How is it rigged?”

“There are weights in the bottles,” Derek explains, “It takes a lot more force than what you threw to knock them over.”

“Un-fucking fair man,” Stiles grumbles trudging away from the game and from a laughing Derek.

“Come on,” Derek says trying to suppress his laugh, grabbing Stiles’ hand and leading him towards the food vendor areas. “Two funnel cakes,” he tells Taylor.

Once they have their funnel cakes, Stiles’ doused in icing sugar and Derek’s topped with strawberries and cream, they’re sitting on the ground under a tree as they dig in. Or rather, as _Derek_ digs in, practically inhaling the thing in one go. Stiles has only taken one bite.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says surprised, “all those months ago at Luke’s Diner, they weren’t lying when they said you like your funnel cake,” Stiles all but giggles. “And here I thought you were a buff, healthy man.”

“Shut up,” Derek glares at Stiles, and it _would_ be menacing if Derek didn’t have strawberry sauce running down his chin like a child. Stiles can’t help but lean in to smear it away with his thumb, bringing it to his mouth and sucking the sauce off. “They only make this stuff once a year and it’s amazing.”

“Here you can have mine, I’ll go get another.”

Derek doesn’t object greedily taking Stiles’ funnel cake as Stiles’ stands, brushes off the leaves and dirt from his pants as he goes to get another one. After they’re done eating and Derek says he’s all good on the funnel cake front, at least for now, Stiles gets a text from Scott saying he’s here. They all meet outside of Luke’s Diner.

“Scott my man,” Stiles beams brining him into a hug, then hugging Allison. They all say their hello’s before they enter Luke’s, to see a very grumpy looking Luke.

“That crazy fucking side show is going on out there with all that food and you come in here?” Luke grumbles throwing his towel down on the counter to point at the carnival going on just outside his Diner.

“But Luke’s has the best food,” Stiles points out.

Luke sighs as he watches the gang pull all the tables they need together so that they’re sitting at one very large table – it’s not like it’s bothering the other customers, there are _no_ other customers. Erica and Boyd sit beside each other; Allison and Scott are beside each other, as Isaac, Rory, Lane, some other villagers are scatter around the table. Even Laura comes in a few minutes later. Derek and Stiles are sitting at the end of the table beside each other, so they can still see the carnival and all the people outside.

There are a lot of people talking over each other trying to get their order in to Luke first, starters and main meals being ordered for the whole table with tons of coffee and pieces of pie for dessert. Luke still looks grumpy but he has that look in his eyes that says he loves what he does, he secretly loves his customers and living in this village no matter how crazy it seems to get sometimes.

Stiles thinks back to that first phone call with Laura, when he was offered the job, and his drive up to Wulfstan. That first night in the Lodge when he met Isaac and he was almost positive he was ready to turn his car back around and go back to the safety of his home in Beacon Hills, with Lydia and Danny.

If he’d done that he never would have made it to Gypsy’s, he never would have met Derek and he wouldn’t be where he was today. It’s not like Stiles is a big believer in fate or true love or whatever it was. He was a firm believer in people having choices to a certain extent and then life just, well led them on a path from thereon in.

Now, Stiles can’t imagine a life back in Beacon Hills – he couldn’t ever picture living back there and being happy. Sure he’d like to go back to visit, see Lydia and Danny because he fears for their sanity if they visited him in Wulfstan. Of course, he’d love to take Derek with him, see him go head to head with Lydia in a stare down, maybe visit his parents grave so Derek can meet them, no matter how morbid it may seem.

Stiles’ life somehow took a turn to what most would consider Crazy Ville, because a village full of werewolves? Come on that shit just doesn’t seem real, but it seems crazier things have happened. Except, it’s not so crazy now, not anymore. They’re his family, he loves Luke with his coffee and pie, loves Gypsy (the real one), loves Ms Patty who’s older but still always down to have a good time, loves Isaac and his bluntness, Erica and Boyd and their quirky relationship. He definitely loves his best bro Scott and his mom Melissa who’s definitely the sweetest woman he’s ever met barring his own mother.

Most of all though, he loves Derek and hell even his boss lady Laura. Maybe he didn’t love Laura so much after the umpteenth time they’d had sex at the Hale House when she bluntly put it that they needed to find somewhere else to do the hanky panky (those were totally her words too). But in the end, it led to Derek moving in with Stiles in his little house that seemed big enough for the two of them. It was their own place, their own sanctuary to get away for a while.

After all, they do live in a town full of werewolves.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eek I can't believe I actually finished it. Scott & Allison totally had to get together, they're just too cute. 
> 
> tumblr: foughtthewolvesofpatience.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> I killed off Papa Stilinski (don’t hate me!), I just couldn’t find a way to incorporate him into the story, other than have him in Beacon Hills on his own while Stiles moved away. And I couldn’t have Papa Stilinski living in that house on his own – just makes me too sad! So the only logic was to kill him..
> 
> The beginning quote is from the 1941 movie, The Wolf Man.
> 
> & tumblr; foughtthewolvesofpatience.tumblr.com


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